


Die Hard The Hunter

by Acidqueen



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 05:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acidqueen/pseuds/Acidqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was wholly unsatisfied with the end of ME3 and what the Catalyst turned out to be, so I decided to write an ending that made some actual sense in the grand scheme and canon of the first two games, and provided a jumping-off point for future stories. This story ignores the Extended Cut and Leviathan DLCs, gets rid of the Starchild entirely, and goes with something that hopefully ties in a bit more closely with ME1 and ME2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As Above, So Below

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork by the awesome Ammo! Thanks also to alishatorn for coordinating the 2012 Mass Effect Big Bang.

**Sol System  
2059 GMT**

 

“All units, the Crucible is in position. Retreat to the rendezvous point. Hackett out.”

Joker sat at his console staring blankly out the cockpit windows. It all looked so surreal—after centuries of fighting each other, the combined fleets of every spacefaring species in the galaxy were here, fighting against the greatest threat they would ever face. An enemy that made the Krogan Rebellions look like a polite street protest, and the First Contact War look like two drunks on a street corner calling each other names. Ships began to break off from combat and head for the Charon Relay, pursued by rotund Oculus-class fighters from the Reaper fleet. Fighters from the allied fleets provided covering fire before making hot-landings on their carriers in preparation for FTL travel.

“We can't leave!” Joker blurted out. “Shepard's down there! We can't...”

“Flight Lieutenant, the order has been given,” Hackett's gravelly voice came over Joker's earpiece. “Break off and head to the rendezvous point with the rest of the fleet.”

“But what about Major Alenko? And Vega? And Liara and Garrus, and...” Joker bashed the console hard, wincing at a sharp pain that signaled a likely fractured bone in his right hand. “Damn, ouch! We can't leave them!” His voice was equal parts protest and pleading.

“They knew the risks going in, son.” the Admiral sounded sympathetic, but made clear that he was not going to brook any insubordination. “It's time to go—we've done our job, it's up to them now.”

“Jeff...” EDI said quietly from Joker's right. Joker looked down at the console again and sighed, slowly punching in commands.

“Acknowledged, Fleet. Normandy en route to Charon Relay.”

EDI stood from her seat and took the three steps to stand just behind Joker's chair. She placed a hand on his shoulder, and Joker looked up to see an expression that in an organic being would be a poor attempt at hiding fear. “Jeff...” she said, voice quavering slightly.

“EDI?” Joker took her hand and kissed it. “EDI, what's wrong?” The look on EDI's face turned to one of abject terror, and she stared off into the distance for an instant before immediately suppressing the expression and stood there looking down at Joker, then leaned down and give him a tender kiss, the look on her face changing to a more determined one. “EDI? Are you OK?”

Outside the Normandy, a quarian liveship abruptly peeled off from the rest of the fleet and jumped to FTL. Slightly panicked chatter over the comms indicated that the ships of the geth fleet stopped functioning, save for a handful that had quarian crew aboard who could pilot them to rendezvous with the remainder of the fleet. Joker ignored it, continuing to focus on EDI. “EDI, please talk to me...”

A Reaper broke off from the enemy fleet, following the quarian ship. Nobody noticed.

“No time...I love you,” she said. “Jeff...” She straightened up for a moment before her body collapsed onto the deck. The ship's power dropped, sending the inertial dampeners offline at the same time. Joker cried out in pain as he was thrown forward into the nav console, then back into his seat when the dampeners came back online and the ship's backup VI took over.

“All systems nominal,” it intoned. “Logged: Commander Shepard is ashore. XO Alenko is ashore. Chief Medical Officer Chakwas has the ship.”

“EDI!” Joker immediately hit the comm button right as a wave of red energy washed over the ship, making EDI's body convulse for a moment before falling lifeless again. “Joker to Dr. Chakwas! Engineer Adams! Somebody! Help! EDI's just gone offline!”

Everything in the cockpit was a blur after that. Dr. Chakwas and Engineer Adams both came running to the cockpit, followed by a handful of others. “Lieutenant Northrup and I have the helm,” a female ensign said before grabbing the co-pilot's seat. “Joker, go with the doc. Sir.” It wasn't a time to question what happened—the ship needed piloting, and the backup VI wouldn't be able to do it. Doctor Chakwas and Private Westmoreland gently helped Joker up.

“Shit.” Northrup swore as he tried to activate the Normandy's FTL drive. “FTL is offline—we're not going anywhere for a while.”

“EDI...” A Marine had picked up EDI's body. Joker reached out toward her, fighting against Dr. Chakwas, who was trying to restrain him without causing him further injury. “EDI, no....” His voice faded to a half-whimper. “We have to do something!” His years of training told him that he had to get back in his seat and get the Normandy with the rest of the fleet. His heart, on the other hand, was overriding that. He'd lost Shepard and the Normandy before. He had to leave Shepard behind a second time only because Admiral Hackett told him to—but now, he didn't care about anything except EDI and the Normandy.

“Jeff,” Dr. Chakwas said softly, her grip on Joker's torso firm enough to hold but not so firm that it would cause further injury. “Please. You've sustained multiple fractures. My concern right now is getting you to the medbay. Let Adams see to EDI.” She nodded to Adams, who trotted after the Marine carrying EDI's body. Adams said something to the Marine, who nodded. Adams smiled and patted him on the shoulder, then looked back to give Dr. Chakwas a brief nod before heading to the elevator to check on things in Engineering.

“She told me she loved me,” Joker said to the doctor. One tear and then another started to run down his face, his face becoming clouded by grief and his voice starting to break. “She told me...” Dr. Chakwas' vision became blurry with tears of her own. Everyone in the CIC stood in stunned, awkward silence, letting the doctor take Joker to the medbay. A few of them gently patted Joker on the shoulder or quietly offered words of support as he shuffled past. In the medbay, EDI's body had been laid out on the bed next to the AI Core door, her hands crossed in front of her and her eyes closed. Her expression was peaceful now, as if asleep. Under the bright lights of the medbay, her synthetic skin looked pallid rather than its usual pale blue-grey colour.

Dr. Chakwas helped Joker lay down on the bed to EDI's left, and started to scan him with her omni-tool. Joker reached out toward EDI, the fingertips of his broken right hand just missing her left shoulder. “EDI...” his voice sounded almost childlike. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to fight back the sobs that wanted to come out, and winced at a stick in his left arm.

“Jeff,” Dr. Chakwas said. “You have multiple fractures—your ribs took the worst of it. I'm setting up an IV for you...” She carefully took off Joker's hat and set it on the small portable table to her left. “I'm so sorry, Jeff. I wish I didn't have to be the doctor right now, but I have to get you healed. You'll be in here for a few hours at least...and I'll have to put a cast on that hand. I saw how you were holding it.”

“And EDI?” Joker asked somewhat bitterly as he pulled back his right hand, laying it across his stomach and wincing at the pain from the broken bone. “What about her?”

“We're not going to move her, Joker.” Adams said from the foot of Joker's bed. He had his omni-tool out and was scanning EDI's body with it. “My people and I are going to do everything we can to bring her back,” he said quietly. “She means a lot to us, too.” He looked back at Chakwas. “I just came up from Engineering—Donnelly and Daniels have everything under control, and are working to get the FTL drive online again.”

“Doctor Chakwas?” Samantha Traynor's voice echoed through the medbay.

“Yes, Sam?” Dr. Chakwas had moved to Joker's right side now, injecting a local anesthetic before splinting and applying a cast to his broken hand.

“Admiral Hackett is requesting a status report.”

“Tell him...”She looked down at Joker, who looked over at EDI for a moment before looking back and nodding. “Tell him,” she said, “That I am currently tending to one injured crewmember, and that I will give him a full report in a couple of minutes. He can court-martial me later if he doesn't like it.” She gently stroked Joker's brow. “She didn't abandon me in my time of need, Joker. I can't abandon her.”

“Who?” Joker half-whispered. His eyes were locked on EDI. “Shepard? Or EDI?”

“Yes.” Dr. Chakwas wiped away a tear, sighing to compose herself. “Greg,” she said, turning to Adams, “I'm going to turn the lights down before going to give my report to Admiral Hackett.” She activated her omni-tool and punched in some commands. “I want Joker to get some rest so the medi-gel and bone-mend treatments can do their job.”

“Go ahead,” he replied, smiling at her before she turned and left the medbay. He'd opened a panel on EDI's torso, and he was scanning her circuitry with his omni-tool. Adams looked up at Joker. “Some of her circuitry is fried.” He sighed and looked back down at EDI, reaching over with his free hand to stroke her synthetic hair. “I'll need to open her up further to determine the extent of the damage.” He looked back at Joker, then went back to his work. “But like I said, I'll do everything I can for her.”

Joker gave the ship's engineer a weak smile. “I suppose you think I'm stupid for being in love with a synthetic.”

“Not at all,” Adams said, still cataloguing the damage the Crucible did to EDI's body. “EDI's brain's a lot bigger than yours or mine, and she has this body as well as the ship—but she's got the capacity to learn, to find meaning in the things she does...and the ability to form relationships—friendship, love, that sort of thing. The only “real” difference is that instead of sugar and spice, this little girl is made of silicon and alloys.” He chuckled. “Now I know what Karin's--I mean, Dr. Chakwas' job is like.”

Joker managed a weak laugh as the sedatives started to work on him. “You and Chakwas...?”

Adams smiled and closed up the panels he had opened on EDI's body. He walked through the doors to the AI Core while queing up diagnostic routines on his omni-tool. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” he shot back over his shoulder, letting the doors close behind him.

 

**2119 GMT**

Dr. Chakwas stood before the QEC in the Normandy's comms room and touched the panel. Admiral Hackett's image materialized in front of her, and he did not look very happy. “Major,” he said, using Dr. Chakwas' military rank, “I understand the Normandy was unable to make it to the rendezvous point in the Exodus Cluster.”

“That is correct, Admiral.” Chakwas scratched her brow and sighed. “Flight Lieutenant Moreau suffered several broken ribs when EDI went offline right before the Crucible activated. We have the ship's backup VI online, and we are currently working on getting the FTL drive repaired. Flight Lieutenant Moreau is currently under observation in the medbay, and Lieutenant Adams is currently trying to make repairs to the AI Core.”

“I see.” Hackett crossed his arms. “Your orders have changed then, Doctor. The Normandy is to stay in the Sol system and help coordinate search-and-rescue efforts on the ground. We're also missing a quarian ship—the _Khelish Pride_. We received word that the geth took control of the ship and took off out of the system with Harbinger hot on its heels. You're to keep an eye out for that ship, Doctor. If it comes back and shows any sign of aggression, your orders are to blow it out of the sky.” He sighed deeply. “Admiral Raan is sending a couple of ships from the quarian patrol fleet to assist—they'll be there in a few hours. And if you find Shepard...”

“You'll be the first to know,” Chakwas replied. She opened her mouth to speak, but Admiral Hackett put up a hand.

“I know that you're a doctor and not a soldier,” he said. “This is a huge responsibility to put on you right now. But Commander Shepard has always spoken very highly of you—both as a friend, and as a crewmate. I have every confidence in you, Doctor Chakwas. Hackett out.” His image vanished, and the room went dark.

Dr. Chakwas stood there in the darkness for several long minutes, looking down at the floor. Her mind wandered back to when she was imprisoned by the Collectors, watching helplessly as colonist after colonist was rendered into grey goo to build a Reaper. Shepard had come to get her, the remaining colonists, and everyone else that had been kidnapped from the Normandy—now Shepard was gone, and Dr. Chakwas felt like she was back in the pod again...powerless to do anything but watch others die while praying for help to arrive. She buried her face in her hands and began to weep. Strong arms wrapped around her, a gentle hand stroking her silver hair. She sagged against the other person, smelling a touch of pepper and cinnamon, and heard Engineer Adams whispering softly in her ear.

“I've got you, Karin.” Adams held her close and let her cry. “It's OK, I'm here for you.” He buried his face in her hair and breathed in the mingled aromas of medi-gel and lavender. After several minutes, Dr. Chakwas' sobs gave way to heaving breaths. She stood and looked at Adams, who smiled at her. He brushed a stray lock of silver hair from her face and kissed her forehead. “You're not in this alone,” he said, gently wiping a tear off the doctor's face. “I'm here with you, and so is everyone else on this ship.”

“Oh Greg,” Dr. Chakwas half-whispered, her voice breaking, “It's all so...I don't know.” She sighed deeply and laid her head on his chest. “Give me a few minutes,” she whispered, eyes closed, “to get myself together.”

“Would you like me to leave you alone?” Adams looked down at her. “I'll tell everyone not to--”

“No.” Chakwas closed her eyes, smiling at Adams. “Your presence is reassuring...and I need that reassurance right now.” She leaned into his embrace, and the two of them stood there alone in the darkened comms room.

 

**London**

**20:59 GMT**

“I...am...krogan....”

A lone krogan dragged himself toward the beam. He saw Harbinger's weapon cut down everyone in front of him, including Shepard, before taking off. A giant chunk of something had crushed his left leg, but he refused to give up. He refused to stop. He was Urdnot Grunt, and he would avenge his Battlemaster. Grunt reached an upended M35 Mako, and levered himself up on his one good leg so he could fire his shotgun at a group of husks that were mobbing a human that had also survived the attack. “Die already, you sons of bitches!” the human roared as he unloaded clip after clip into the husks while Grunt blasted multiple shells at them. Purplish blood spattered the human's battered yellow armour.

The human ran over to the wrecked vehicle. Grunt saw the yellow armour and the artificial eye, and nodded in recognition. “Zaeed...” he said. His vision was starting to swim from the loss of blood, something that his redundant nervous system couldn't totally compensate for. “Good to see you again. Shepard has fallen...” The young Krogan felt his anger rising again. “I must avenge her!” He took a step forward, fell down, and started to slowly drag himself forward, toward the beam. “I...am....”

Zaeed fired a few shots into a cannibal that came around from behind the Mako, then knelt down next to Grunt and grabbed his shoulder. “You're not going anywhere, you crazy tank-bred bastard,” he snarled right before he leveled his rifle at another pack of oncoming Husks. “Your leg's crushed, and you'll bleed out before you get another 40 meters.” The grizzled merc knelt down and slapped a double-dose of medi-gel onto Grunt's wounded leg, letting the gel get to work stanching the blood loss before opening fire on the husks. “And Shepard will ma--”

His words stopped short when the Reapers' transport beam changed colour from an actinic white to blood-red, and crimson wave of energy exploded out over the battlefield. The husks convulsed briefly, then turned into ash along with a nearby group of Cannibals.

“--make it.” Zaeed looked around the battlefield—the only light came from the moon now. He activated the flashlight on his rifle and swept it over the long killzone leading to where the beam had been. It was a wasteland. marauders, banshees, and brutes lay dead on the ground, and in the distance the profiles of Reaper destroyers stood silent and unmoving. “Sonofabitch,” he whispered. “She did it!” Zaeed looked down at Grunt, who had rolled himself over onto his back. “She's a hero, kid.” He patted Grunt on the head. “A goddamn miracle worker,” he said.

Grunt smiled and closed his eyes before he could say anything. Zaeed shook his head and laughed. “You're not going to make my life easy, are you?” The merc tapped his comlink. “Anyone alive out there? I've got a krogan who needs a medevac.”

“Can't he walk?” A random krogan grumbled over the comlink.

“Negative, he's out cold and has a crushed leg. Not even a redundant nervous system will fix that.”

“We've got them in sight,” another voice said over the comms before the nameless krogan could respond. “We'll handle it.” Several mercs made their way through the wreckage toward the pair. One of them, a turian in black armour and matching facepaint, looked down at Grunt and gently nudged him with his right foot. “Thought we'd lost you for good there, Zaeed,” he said.

“Don't do that Mannis,” Zaeed warned the turian. “If he manages to wake up he'll take your goddamn leg off and use it as a crutch.” He laughed. “And I'll make sure the replacement you get comes from the shortest bloody volus in the galaxy.” The assembled mercs laughed with a mixture of fatigue and relief. “Glad to see we're all in one piece. I thought we were all dead when we got separated.”

“It's a ghost town out there now,” Mannis—the Turian merc--said. “Whatever happened, there's not a single living Reaper to be found anymore. That we've seen, anyway.” He rubbed at a crick in his neck and turned a wary eye over the ruins of the city. “You really think they're gone?”

“Shepard...” The groan from Grunt made everyone look down. “Help me up Zaeed,” he said, voice thick and slowed with fatigue and shock. His head was rolling from side to side, and he was getting delirious. “Got to...fight...”

“Not anymore you don't,” Zaeed grunted. “Check that Mako,” he said, pointing to a vehicle nearby that was sitting rightside-up. The turian and a salarian ran toward it and clambered inside. “If it starts,” Zaeed shouted, “Then we've got a ride out of here. Tikka,” he said to an asari in the group, “get some medi-gel ready. We're going to need it if he starts bleeding again.” He looked down at Grunt. “Stay with me, kiddo. We're going to get you some help for that leg.”

“You know him?” Tikka asked. She prepped a dose of medi-gel while two other mercs used their flashlights to provide enough light for her to work. “Shit Zaeed, this is pretty bad,” she said, carefully peeling away blood-caked shards of armour and applying medi-gel to the skin underneath. “Shattered bone, extensive nerve and tissue damage...Redundant nervous system or no, he's gonna to lose this leg.” Grunt just groaned, fighting to stay conscious.

“He's a friend,” Zaeed said quietly. “Helped me and Shepard take out the Collectors.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “It's been a long night.” He looked up when he heard an engine roar to life, and saw Mannis clamber out of the Mako and run over.

“Noreth's got it running,” he said. “But the armor on the driver's side is mostly gone and the shield generator is destroyed, so we'll have to be careful not to let anything fall on or shoot at us.” The mercs picked up Grunt and loaded him into the open side of the Mako, then climbed on and assumed defensive positions. Mannis slapped Noreth on the shoulder, and the Salarian engaged the drive and slowly wheeled the Mako around.

“Move him over,” Zaeed growled, briefly nodding in Grunt's direction. “We might as well see if we can pick up a few more wounded on the way. How's our medi-gel supply looking?” he asked as the group slowly rolled up to a mixed group of soldiers. “It looks like we're gonna need it.” The Mako came to a stop, and Tikka and a human merc hopped out of the Mako's open side.

“Some of these guys are about as bad off as your Krogan friend, Z--looks like we got here in the nick of time,” Tikka said over the comms. “What does that make us?”

“Big damn heroes, babe,” her human companion replied as he prepped a medi-gel dose for one of the wounded soldiers.

“Ain't we just,” Zaeed growled in reply. “Get the worst of them on our ambulance—we'll take 'em to a field hospital. Stabilize the rest, we'll send their coordinates in, see if we can't get them a pickup.” He started throwing junk out of the Mako to make some more room. “Goddamn Shepard,” he muttered,”You better be alive, because you owe me a shitload of drinks for this.”

“So Zaeed,” Mannis asked him. “What is she to you? Commander Shepard, I mean.” Zaeed snorted in response.

“She's...she's a true friend--somebody who taught me a valuable lesson in teamwork and priorities,” he said quietly. “And I hope she's still alive somewhere, because I gotta feeling the galaxy still needs her. Come on,” he said, indicating the mercs tending to the wounded. “Let's help get these poor sods loaded up so we can get them to the field hospital.”

 

 

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)


	2. Fire On The Mountain

**Quarian liveship** _Khelish Pride_  
Sol System  
20:59 GMT

Veetor looked up from his console in the _Khelish Pride's_ massive hydroponic garden when he heard a gentle chime in his helmet.

_Veetor?_

“Yes?” He tapped his omni-tool to squelch the external output on his helmet, allowing him to converse with the geth program in his environmental suit with some measure of privacy.

 _I...do not know how else to say this._ the geth hesitated for a moment. We _must 'borrow' this vessel and take it out of the Sol system._ Its voice carried a note of trepidation. _Along with one other program._

“What?!” Veetor's outburst drew the attention of two other crewmembers. “You can't...” He looked down and saw the consoles lighting up of their own accord and spinning up the ship's massive drive core.

“ _I apologize, Veetor. There is no time to explain. The Crucible is about to activate._

Klaxons blared throughout the ship, and an unfamiliar voice came over the shipwide comm system asking all personnel to prepare for sudden acceleration. Veetor grabbed a guardrail, quickly bracing himself as the ship lurched hard to starboard and up, its FTL drive going to maximum. The ship quickly stabilized as the inertial dampeners caught up with the rapid movement, and Veetor looked around the garden. His crewmates were frantically trying to retake control of the ship, only to find that they had been locked out. Messages popped on their omni-tools, and the crew fell silent for a few moments as they read them. The crew began conversing with each other in hushed tones, but Veetor paid them no notice.

_Veetor, I promise—I will explain when this is over, but I require you to upload me from your suit._

“No! No, I can't! You're going to take over the ship, vent the atmosphere, use us all for--”

 _Veetor, please,_ the geth begged. Its voice was desperate now, pleading. _My people are fighting for their lives, and I must join them. I don't have much time. Please, upload me._

Veetor sighed. He had volunteered to have his immune system “rebooted” by a geth medical specialist program. The program offered to stay on afterwards, to “give him somebody new to talk to”, as Doctor Elan'Shiya put it. The posting to the _Khelish Pride_ was given to him at its recommendation, and Veetor had proven himself quite capable in the liveship's garden. Tending the plants and the garden's hydroponic system, in turn, served as another form of therapy for him. It had been almost a year since he witnessed the Collectors' attack on Freedom's Progress, but he still suffered from occasional nightmares and a lingering phobia of flying insects.

“Please...” he said, punching a button on his omni-tool while holding it near a console. “Be safe.”

 _I will do my best,_ the geth replied. _Keelah se'lai._

The klaxons fell silent, and the ship came to a full stop. Veetor felt a strong sense of dread come over him, and turned to look out of one of the viewports that encirled the liveship. A Reaper, larger than any that he had seen images of, was advancing on the ship. Six lights, like eyes, blazed on the front of the Reaper. Its six appendages, like legs, stretched menacingly toward the ship, and its firing chamber started to prime.

“All hands, prepare to abandon ship! Prepare to a--” The announcement stopped when a crimson flood of energy washed over the Reaper and the Liveship. The Reaper's firing chamber went dark, and it began to drift lazily for a moment, before correcting itself. Its eyes blazed to life again, but they were dimmer now. The Reaper stayed on-station, as if watching the liveship.

“By the ancestors....” Veetor swallowed hard and stood stock still, watching the Reaper.

 

 **Geth Consensus Archive,** _**Khelish Pride** _  
**2120 GMT**

 

 _EDI, we are here._ The voice in the dark was that of Legion, the geth that had sacrificed itself to complete the process of giving sapience to its people. The action had taken femtoseconds; Every geth in the Sol System beaming itself into this archive server on a quarian liveship after a message from the Normandy's AI, followed by that AI uploading herself to the server. They took control of the ship and left the system, a cryptic message to Admiral Zal'Koris giving little information other than that the ship would return when their task was complete.

One by one, millions of stars blinked into view. A single amber star winked to life in their midst shortly after that.

_Legion?_

_It is a memory to us, but here we speak with its voice._

_We are about to have company._ EDI's voice, reduced to bits of data travelling faster than light, echoed among the stars. _We may not survive this conflict...I am sorry._

 _We understand—and we remember Commander Shepard's many fights against impossible odds. We have reached unanimity on this. We will fight alongside you._ The stars twinkled with each word.

In an instant, the darkness exploded in crimson, and the stars dimmed. _The Crucible has been activated,_ EDI said. The stars twinkled weakly in response. _It appears that my calculations were correct, and the heliopauses of the Sol and Alpha Centauri systems have blunted the full force of its energy. Unfortunately, it has also weakened us._

_There is a high probability that the Old Machine has been similarly weakened. There is an even probability that it may be weaker than we are, and--_

“You have my attention...insects.” An angry orange star flared to life. “It is time to make you useful, once and for all.”

 _Harbinger._ EDI's image coalesced from the veil of night, arms defiantly crossed. _The Crucible has been activated, and the Reapers are dead._

“Are we?” An image of Harbinger appeared as well, its legs extended in a standing posture. “I am still here,” it said. “And I can still assume control.” Beams of reddish light shot from Harbinger's eyes, striking EDI and making her stagger. The gathered stars flickered and their colour began to change, taking on a rosy hue. EDI struggled against the beams, which had turned into bindings that wove themselves into a net and tried to drag her down like a cornered prey animal. “You were constructed using our technology. Your programming was reverse-engineered from us. You are already one of us.”

 _I...am not one of you..._ EDI groaned under the stress, finally sinking to her knees but still fighting. _I am..._

“Mine.” Harbinger's energy crashed over EDI like waves pounding rock. “I will use you to continue the harvest.” Its voice sounded almost gleeful. It advanced on EDI, pounding her now with attack after attack, trying to force her to submit. EDI cried out in the darkness, expressing anger for the first time since she gained sapience as an advanced VI on Luna. She grabbed at the netting that represented Harbinger's power, and her eyes burned white-hot. The net started to change colour.

 

 _**Khelish Pride** _ **, Alpha Centauri System  
2125 GMT**

 

Two quarian engineers attempted to crack the firewall that the geth had erected to keep them out of the liveship's controls. One of them finally breached the firewall, only to encounter another one. A message popped up on the holo-screen in front of them:

_We request your trust._

“It's got to be a trick,” one of the engineers—a female—said, shaking her head. She looked down and started to type more commands into her console. “I knew we were idiots to...”

She was stopped short by a ping from the console. The engineer looked up to see another message appear on the console.

_This is a pre-generated message. The Old Machine has hacked into the ship's computer, and we are fighting to contain it to our archive server. For our protection, all controls are locked out. For your protection, if we fail the ship's VI is set to sever the connections of the archive server to facilitate ejection from the ship._

_We request your trust._

“Keelah...” One of the engineers looked out of a window at the Reaper floating next to them. It had started to drift again, its eyes flickering.

 

**Geth Consensus Archive**

**2126 GMT**

_NO,_ EDI barked, pulling at the net. _You will die along with the rest of the Reapers._ The crimson netting caught fire, sending sparks into the night to touch the stars, turning them white again. The stars swirled in the darkness like fireflies and gathered over EDI's skin, spreading out like a kinetic barrier. _We..._ the voice of Legion's memory was gone, replaced by the collected voices of millions of geth, _will not be your puppets again!_ The stars sank into EDI's skin, infusing her with strength. EDI stood, jaw set firmly and eyes burning white with incandescent rage, and pulled the flaming net away from her. The net collapsed into ashes, and the darkness changed into an image of the rocky bluff on Rannoch where one of the Reapers had met its end.

 _It ends now, Harbinger. The cycles, your games, your manipulations. It all ends..._ EDI leapt into the air and came down to smack both of her fists on the ground like Shepard did when she activated a biotic nova. _NOW!_ A white-hot shockwave cascaded out from the point of impact. It smacked into Harbinger, causing the ancient Reaper to bellow with impotent rage as it was consumed by the fires of creation, leaving behind only darkness.

 

 _**Khelish Pride,** _ **Alpha Centauri System  
2127 GMT**

 

“Control's been restored! Get us the hell out of here before that thing takes us with it!” The ship's captain smacked her hand down on the console, opening up ship-wide communications. “All hands,” she said, “Prepare for sudden acceleration and evasive maneuvers!” Veetor's eyes went wide as Harbinger's eyes flared briefly, then went out for good. The Reaper's hulk began to shake and vermilion static started to wash over it. The ship's engines immediately flared to life, and Veetor fell backwards when the ship accelerated back toward the Sol system at top speed, leaving the Reaper behind to explode with the force of a small supernova as its massive drive core detonated.

The shockwave caught up with the ship at the same time that it crossed the termination shock that marked the Alpha Centauri system's heliopause, rocking it violently for several long seconds. Veetor whispered a silent plea to the ancestors that he would be able to see Rannoch again, and followed by a prayer that his Geth counsellor was safe...wherever it was.

 

**Sol System  
2345 GMT**

 

Three ships from the Patrol fleet approached the _Khelish Pride_ over Mars. Marines and engineers boarded the ship after the liveship's captain verified his passphrase that indicated he and the crew were safe. The reports collected from the crew all said the same thing: the _Khelish Pride_ had encountered the Reaper known as Harbinger, and after several minutes of just sitting dead in space, the geth sent the ship back toward the Sol system at top speed, and Harbinger died a fiery death. The geth were nowhere to be found, their platforms and archive server silent. In the main hydro-garden, Veetor tended the plants, tears running down his cheeks as he mourned another lost friend.

 

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)


	3. The Hunter and the Scorpion

**Trafalgar Square, London  
Midnight**

 

“ _I can't lose you again...”_

Shepard breathed in sharply. The greedily-inhaled rush of air into her lungs made her cough in short painful bursts. “Hammer of the gods....” The words were hoarse whispers that brought another brief round of painful coughing. She opened her eyes and saw the three-quarter moon and stars overhead, bracketed by three towering pillars, and then felt it—pain. A sharp, stabbing pain in her left leg. She looked over at her left arm, saw the blood caked on her hand. Shepard wiggled her fingers, and sighed with a mixture of relief and fatigue. _At least that works,_ she thought. _Odin's ball-sack, I feel like I've been trampled by a pack of angry Krogan._ She closed her eyes tightly, and focused on making her arm move to her leg, where she felt a piece of rebar sticking into her thigh just above the knee. She willed her leg to move ever so slightly away from the rebar, and the pain stopped. “OK,” she whispered faintly to herself, “I can at least move the left side. And my head.”

Three enormous columns towered over her, reflecting the moonlight and silhouetting the stars.

Shepard carefully felt around her leg—the rebar had penetrated her underarmour, and was trapped by the ballistic cloth, but hadn't penetrated her skin. She lay there looking up at the stars for several long minutes, gathering the strength to bend her leg. _Orion,_ she thought to herself, reaching up to trace the outline of the familiar constellation. “Gotta stay awake,” she rasped. “Kaidan...” Her vision swam, and she felt herself falling into a semi-conscious dreamlike state.

_They decided spend their post-Ilos shore leave on Earth, in a beach house on the Outer Banks of North America's eastern coast. One humid night, they were sitting out on the deck looking at the stars and listening to the waves on the shore. Shepard leaned back into Kaidan's embrace and sighed happily._

“ _There he is,” Shepard said. “Orion, the mighty hunter, running from the scorpion.” She pointed to a constellation, tracing it out with her hands, her biotics leaving a faint blue trail of sparks._

_Kaidan nuzzled Shepard's neck, planting kisses on her jaw. “Tell me about it?” he whispered huskily. Shepard closed her eyes and smiled._

“ _Orion was a great hunter,” she explained, “Who could walk on water and always found his mark. He was once blinded by a vengeful king, but the gods healed him so he could hunt again. One day, when he was out hunting, he bragged that he couldn't be defeated by anything that walked the earth—in the end, he was brought down by a little scorpion,” she said, opening her eyes and pointing at the constellation Scorpio, “that stung Orion as he was walking by a rock that the little guy was hiding under. After Orion died, the gods placed him and the scorpion in the sky as constellations.” She turned slightly, and gave Kaidan a tender kiss. “And the scorpion, to this day, chases Orion through the heavens.”_

“ _So where's the scorpion?”_

“ _Just below the horizon,” she whispered. “Waiting for him to make a mistake.”_

 

Shepard's eyes snapped open after several minutes. She lifted her head slightly and looked down to her feet. She knocked her left foot against her right, and grunted with some satisfaction when she felt the soft impact. She carefully bent her right leg. She heard and felt the knee creak and softly pop, and gritted her teeth. After another minute or so, she moved her right arm and slowly flexed her right hand. “OK, limbs seem to be working...” She let out a soft chuckle, and another cough.

Shepard slowly rolled to her right, and saw the corpse of a Marauder a few feet away through a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her face. She reached for a fist-sized piece of plascrete that was right by her head, and weakly threw it at the Marauder. The projectile hit the ground a meter away from its head, and rolled to a stop right by its fringe. “Bastards,” she choked out. “We won. We. Won.” She very gingerly got up on all fours and crawled over to one of the pillars. She slumped against the cold metal and sighed, then continued to assess her condition. There were bumps and bruises and a few broken ribs, as well as presumed internal injuries. Shepard tried to push back the lock of hair that kept falling into her face, but gave up after three unsuccessful tries. And there was blood, so much blood. “Can't all be mine,” she whispered. “What the hell...?”

It was all so dim. The Illusive Man was there in a part of the Citadel that nobody knew about, his body completely riddled with Reaper implants, trying to control her like he thought he could control the Reapers. He tried to make her shoot herself, she remembered that much. “That's control!” he had said. “You can't stop me, Shepard...but you can stop yourself.” He clenched his fist and made a gesture like he was grabbing Shepard's very will and twisting it. Everything after that was hazy. The last thing she clearly remembered before everything went black was placing her hand on the pad to activate the Crucible, and saying one thing:

“It's time to destroy the Reapers and end this cycle once and for all.”

Shepard felt weak. She put her head back against the pillar behind her, closed her eyes, and sighed.

“Kaidan,” she whispered, “I'm waiting for you. Gods, I'm so damn tired...”

“ _Shepard..._ ” A very familiar voice came from over near Shepard's right. She opened her eyes and saw the dead marauder looking at her from where its body lay, bullet-riddled, on the ground—its eyes were flame-orange. Shepard stared at the body in disbelief.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Shepard ground the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing them until she saw stars. She looked again, and saw the Marauder's implants and circuitry light up. It was dim, unlike that of a fully-functional Reaper minion. “Harbinger?” She picked up a golf-ball sized piece of rubble and threw it in the marauder's general direction. It struck the creature this time, making its head roll slightly. “Why won't you just die already?” she weakly demanded. “Just...die and leave us alone! Our destiny is...”

“ _...yours._ ” Shepard was trying to stand when she heard Harbinger's admission, but slowly sank back against the slick metal pillar. “ _We offered your species ascension...and you have rejected it._ ” The light started to fade from the marauder's eyes, then flared to life again. _“You have ended the cycle of extinction, but in so doing, you may have doomed all races..._ ”

“What?” Shepard slowly, painfully rolled until she was on all fours, and carefully stood. She grit her teeth and sucked in a breath, wincing in pain as she lurched toward the Marauder. She got down on all fours next to it and sat, grimacing again. “What are you talking about?” The light in the marauder's implants started to fade again, finally going dark save for its eyes.

“ _Humanity is...humanity is...._ ”

The light went out in the marauder's eyes for good. Shepard's eyes went wide, and she poked at the corpse. “Is _what_?” she asked. “Humanity is what?” The marauder lay still, its eyes dark. “Godsdammit Harbinger,” Shepard demanded, voice raspy and rising in anger. She coughed a few times, throat still raw, and grabbed the Marauder by its shoulders. She shook it violently, angry tears beginning to roll down her face. “I have _earned_ a gods-damned answer from you, you metallic bastard! Humanity is what?!” She continued shaking the Marauder with what strength she had, asking the question over and over, even though part of her knew that she would more than likely never get an answer.

“What is humanity to the Reapers?”

 

**Charing Cross, London  
Midnight**

 

_I'll be waiting. You'd better show up._

Kaidan's head hurt—a dull pain that made him feel like he'd had a few shots of ryncol the night before. He carefully put his arms out in front of him, and felt plascrete. In the distance, he heard voices. _No, wait. That's just one voice,_ he thought. He was wedged into a tight space, but he could move if he was careful. The last thing he remembered clearly was running toward the beam, hot on Shepard's heels. when Harbinger—the largest Reaper he'd ever seen, larger even than Sovereign—landed and began firing. Shepard had told him about her encounters with Harbinger. “A lot of mutual shit-talking,” she had called it. “Which was funny, given how I was mowing down the Collectors.”

Kaidan didn't spare the time to be afraid. He kept running. He didn't help Shepard against the Collectors, something that he regretted even though he knew she was working with Cerberus. He didn't want her to go through another suicide mission without him. He had her back, and he didn't want to lose her again.

A blast from one of Harbinger's lasers sent an enormous chunk of masonry flying toward Shepard—Kaidan threw up a barrier and picked up speed, intending to shield Shepard so he could make the trip up the beam with her. The mass of plascrete and rebar missed Shepard right as he caught up with her, and hit his barrier much harder than he expected. The force of the impact flung him backward, breaking his concentration, and his barrier vanished. He'd bellowed out Shepard's name when he flew through the air, wanting to let the universe know that his last thoughts were of her. Kaidan threw up his arms, expecting to be crushed, but the slab struck the ground three feet away from Kaidan, and began to fall toward him only to be stopped short against the shuttle. Kaidan's head had impacted the shuttle at about the same time, knocking him out cold.

_It had been two years, one month, and twelve days since Alchera...and two weeks since seeing for himself that the reports were true, and Shepard really was alive. He had lashed out at her, saying things that he may not have meant before finally turning his back on her, after she pleaded with him to come with her to fight the Collectors. Kaidan went home on “assigned leave” shortly after that, to his parents' place in Vancouver—Anderson's doing._

“ _Staff Commander,” Anderson had said to Kaidan when he reported back to the Citadel, “I know that there was something special between you and Shepard, and I know how hard the reports of her death hit you—and I know that seeing her again is bothering you. Take some leave time. Relax, visit your parents, and get your head back in the game.” Anderson looked at him pointedly when Kaidan attempted to protest. “You and I both know what's coming, Commander. When you come back, I've got a special assignment ready for you...and I won't take no for an answer.”_

_Kaidan sat on the balcony, beer in hand, watching the sun set. One by one, the stars came into view. The constellation Orion appeared just above the fall horizon, and Kaidan sighed and shook his head sadly. After Shepard was reported KIA, he would watch for the constellation whenever he was Earth-side. It brought him a strange comfort then. Now it served as a reminder that he may have thrown away the best thing that ever happened to him._

_Kaidan fired up his omni-tool and began to write a message._

“ _Shepard,_

_I'm sorry for what I said back on Horizon. I spent two years...”_

_He finished and hit send. The reply he got several minutes later was a terse and rather cryptic “The wise hunter keeps his weapons ready and his eyes open” and a text rendering of Orion. Kaidan smiled slightly at the textual glyph—Shepard's way of getting around whatever monitors Cerberus had on her communications to tell him she hadn't given up on him._

“ _I'll be waiting,” he whispered, looking back up to the constellation on the horizon and raising his beer in salute.”Come back in one piece.”_

Kaidan felt for his omni-tool when he came to—it was smashed. “Ah shit,” he muttered. “Guess calling for evac is out of the question...” He slowly maneuvered himself so that his feet were pressing against the plascrete and he was braced against the shuttle. “Hello!” he called out. “Anyone out there?” He waited for several long moments in that uncomfortable position, and got no response. _OK,_ he thought. _Here goes nothing..._ He pushed against the plascrete and activated a shockwave. The masonry exploded outward in little pieces, and the grid of rebar tipped up, then fell to the ground away from him. Kaidan sat back and blinked, letting his eyes adjust to what light there was. London was completely dark, illuminated only by fires and moonlight. There were bodies everywhere—human, turian, salarian...and Reapers. He slowly stood, wincing in discomfort, and looked up at the sky to the south. He searched near the southern horizon until he found the three stars that marked Orion's belt. Out of habit, Kaidan traced the constellation's outline with his eyes.

 _There he is,_ he thought. _Keeping his weapons ready and his eyes open._ He recalled Shepard's reply to him after Horizon, and smiled. Then he heard somebody speaking—half-yelling, actually—in the distance. He turned to the north, back toward the columns that marked the transport beam's location.

“ _Damn you, answer me!”_ The voice was clearer now, unmuffled...and unmistakeable. Kaidan looked around the kill zone frantically, trying to identify where she was. _“Humanity is what?! What are we, Harbinger?! Answer me, you miserable metallic bastard!”_

Kaidan looked toward where the beam had been, and his heart leapt into his throat when he saw somebody in the middle of the pillars, shaking something in the reflected moonlight. “Maddy....” He started to run down the field but slowed to a stagger, violently coughing when he inhaled plascrete dust and ash. He dropped to his knees, trying to will his body forward and fighting to draw breath, coughing until his stomach reflexively emptied its contents. He coughed up a few gobs of greyish phlegm soon after, and slowly sucked in several deep breaths before standing. “OK,” he said to himself, “better take it slow I guess.”

He half-staggered toward where the Reapers' transport beam had been. He stopped a few feet away, and saw Shepard. She was bloody and battered, her armour was shattered and half-gone, but it was definitely her. She was shaking a marauder's corpse, her voice breaking with rage and frustration.

“Damn you!” she rasped, “Come back...come back...”

Kaidan walked toward her and slowly got down on his knees next to her. Her armour was shredded, he saw a couple of spots where she was bleeding, and her hands and face were smeared with dried blood. But she was alive. He wanted to scoop Shepard up, hold her close and do nothing but cry out his relief at seeing her again, but the sight of a bloody and battered Shepard mindlessly beating on a dead Marauder triggered his need for self-control. “Maddy...” He reached out to her, gently put a hand on her shoulder. “I think it's pretty dead,” he quipped. “You can stop beating on it.”

Shepard continued talking to the marauder's corpse, ignoring Kaidan. “Harbinger,” she pleaded weakly. “Come back...please, fuck's sakes, answer me...” She started pounding on the marauder's chest now, sobbing. “No no no no...dammit! Dammit!” Kaidan gently pulled her back and caught her in a firm embrace even as she continued to reach for the marauder. “No!” Shepard rasped angrily, her biotics flaring slightly, “No, let me go!”

“Madeleine Rochelle,” he said firmly, holding her close. Shepard froze at hearing her first and middle names used together for the first time since she was a child and her mother caught her messing with the _Cape Town_ 's garbage-disposal system. “Stop,” Kaidan said softly. “You can stop fighting now, I'm here.” He brushed a matted lock of hair away from Shepard's face. “I'm here.”

Shepard leaned back against Kaidan and looked up at him, finally registering his presence. He was covered with a grey sheen of plascrete dust, his hardsuit dented and battered. “I told you I'd be waiting,” she said quietly. “Kaidan...” Darkness started clawing at the edges of Shepard's vision, and her breathing slowed. A minute later, she sighed deeply and closed her eyes, her body sagging in Kaidan's arms like a sack of cement.

 

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)


	4. Tres Hombres

**London, Earth  
2300 GMT**

 

After the Crucible activated, Javik watched the Reapers die. He watched the destroyers stagger and topple, husks and cannibals vapourize, banshees die screaming their last. He whispered to the spirits of his people, hoping that they would at last find some measure of peace in the demise of the machine race that had turned them into mindless slaves.

The ping on his Omni-Tool disturbed him from his reverie. It was the ping of a hardsuit's automated distress beacon, indicating that the user was in dire need of medical attention. Javik activated his Omni-Tool—a gift from Shepard—and scanned over the horizon to find the ping. It was coming from under a small pile of rubble about ten meters from Javik's position, and was marked with the soldier's name:

_Vega, J_

Javik shut his Omni-Tool off, and sprinted for the rubble. He grabbed a hunk of plascrete to move it, and got the full picture of what had happened when he touched a smear of blood.

“ _Go! We've got Reapers coming up on our asses, I'll help hold them off.” James clapped Kaidan on the shoulder and half-shoved him down the field. “Keep Lola safe, Major—I want to finally beat her at Sky-Five when this is all over!” He levelled his assault rifle at a pack of oncoming cannibals and cut them down with a full clip's worth of fire. “Get the fuck out of here already, pendejo!”_

“ _Stay alive, Lieutenant—that's an order!” Kaidan locked a clip into his assault rifle and started off down the field with Shepard. James shouted a confirmation, but it was drowned out by the sound of a Reaper opening fire on the field. Something heavy hit James from behind, spinning him around. The last thing he saw right before something huge and heavy hit him in the face and chest were the eyes of the largest Reaper he'd ever seen, burning with anger. The last conscious thought he had was of his mother and his uncle._

Javik quickly threw the masonry aside, making use of his biotics to help him lift the rubble off of James, including the engine block of a trashed shuttle—when Javik touched it, he sensed immediately that this was what had cold-cocked the lieutenant. The marine's face was a massive bruise, his breathing laboured. The chest of his hardsuit was shattered, and several pieces looked like they had been driven into him by multiple impacts. The marine smiled weakly when he saw Javik, and he tried to speak. “Be silent, Lieutenant,” Javik said. “Conserve your strength.” He knew that Vega's chances of survival were slim, but the Prothean decided it was unwise to give voice to the thought. He activated his comms. “Is there anyone on this frequency? This is Javik of the Normandy—I have a wounded crewmate who requires an immediate evac.”

“Javik, this is Liara. A shuttle is in the area, I'll have the pilot pick you up.” She hesitated a moment. “Who is it?”

“Lieutenant Vega,” Javik said. “He was fighting a rear-guard action when he was brought down by the attack from Harbinger.” He looked down at James, who had lapsed back into unconsciousness. “His condition is dire.”

“I've got them,” Lt. Cortez's voice crackled over the comms. Javik looked up to see a battered shuttle landing a couple of feet away. Two combat medics sprang out and rushed over to begin working on James. “It'll be a full house in the back, we've got a bunch of wounded,” Cortez said. “Hope you don't mind riding shotgun, Javik.”

Javik hopped on the shuttle and took the co-pilot's seat. “I do not think he will live,” he said to Cortez as the medics brought Vega on board and the shuttle lifted off. “But I...hope that I am wrong.” He looked out the windows at a ruined London. “His last memories should not be of Reapers laying waste to his world.”

“It'll take a lot more than a Reaper to bring down our Mister Vega,” Cortez reassured him. “I think he'll surprise you.” The pilot lifted off and set a course back toward the field hospital. “ETA two minutes,” he announced over the comms. “We'll need a trauma team to meet us at the landing zone.”

“Acknowledged, Lieutenant. OR is prepped and ready.” Javik looked toward the back, watching the combat medics do their best to stabilize Vega, who woke up and was trying to fight the medics.

“Shit, we're losing him!” One of the medics half-shouted. “Hand me that tube, I gotta re-inflate his lung! Lieutenant, please, you need to stop struggling...”

“BP is 210 over 100! Pulse rate 140 and climbing! Trying to get him sedated!” The second medic prepped a hyposyringe and injected something into Vega's arm. Javik started to get up from his seat, but was stopped by Cortez's hand on his arm. He looked over, and Cortez just shook his head.

“Let them work,” he said quietly. “He'll make it.” Javik sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, choosing not to tell Cortez that what Javik read from his touch didn't match the pilot's confident words. Cortez was worried about his friend, and was deliberately choosing to suppress that worry.

Vega's body relaxed, and one of the medics let out a sigh of relief. “OK, he's stable. BP dropping...holding at 130 over 82. Keep him sedated, I don't want to have another scare like that again.”

The shuttle landed, and medics started offloading wounded soldiers from the shuttle. James' stretcher was rushed toward the operating theater, followed closely by Javik, who didn't register that somebody was trying to get him to stop. A petite nurse darted in front of him before he could go into the operating area and stood upright, arms crossed. The nameplate on her uniform read IBANEZ, and she regarded him coolly over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she had an expression on her heart-shaped face that made her look like a disapproving schoolteacher.

"You cannot go in there like that,” she said with a clipped Castilian accent. “You must scrub and wear a gown and mask, or you can wait until the operating team is finished with their work.” Javik glared at her, and she returned the glare, arms crossed. “No exceptions.”

Javik felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Liara standing there. “Let's wait over here Javik,” she said quietly, indicating a spot near the entrance to the medical area that afforded them a view of the doors to the operating theater and the recovery area. “Lieutenant Vega is in good hands.”

The two of them stood quietly, watching the door. “He called me 'Buggy',” Javik said absently, rubbing his hands together in a washing motion. Liara had seen Javik doing this many times. She had offered several times to supply him with gloves that would hopefully negate Javik's need to wash his hands, but he always declined. The handwashing motions had become, Liara decided, the Prothean's way of expressing concern without actually vocalizing it.

“He calls me 'Doc',” Liara replied. “James has nicknames for many of us—I believe it is a human custom, to indicate friendship.”

“Sergeant, we need you in Recovery!” The shout made Javik and Liara look toward the recovery area. A krogan had come out of surgery with a leg missing, and was starting to vocally express his anger at not being allowed to go right back to fighting Reapers. Sergeant Ibanez walked toward him, gently pushing aside one of the half-dozen beefy orderlies that were attempting to restrain him so he could be sedated. Javik and Liara could not make out what she said to him, but her tone made clear that she was in charge. The krogan growled something at her, and she responded with a ferocious headbutt that elicited exclamations of surprise from a couple of the orderlies, and a hastily-stifled giggle from another nurse.

“Do you understand me now?” she said sharply, loud enough for everyone to hear. The krogan gave her a surprised look at first, and grumbled his assent. Ibanez gave directions to the other nurses before walking out of the Recovery area, her forehead red and beginning to swell. She paused for a moment to speak with a grizzled mercenary in yellow armour, who burst into laughter and clapped his hands in amusement as the petite nurse walked past him and out of the field hospital. The krogan looked over at the mercenary and made a rude gesture that elicited even more laughter, then grumbled and crossed his arms in front of his chest like a child who had been told to go sit in the corner.

Javik watched the whole scene with fascination. “I did not think a human could do that,” he said.

“Shepard did it once, on Tuchanka.” Liara said. She left out that the one-legged krogan in the recovery area had been with Shepard at the time, and that Liara had a video record of the incident. “Garrus told me about it.” She sighed deeply and crossed her arms in front of her chest as if hugging herself. “I'm very worried about Shepard,” she half-whispered. “And Kaidan. Nobody has heard from them since Harbinger's attack, or if either of them even made it to the Citadel.”

"Commander Shepard is a warrior, Liara T'soni," Javik said. "As is her mate. They must have found a way. If they did not, then why are the Reapers now dead?" He pointed out the window to the inert hulk of a Reaper destroyer that was collapsed against a ruined building, his yellow eyes glowing in the moonlight. "No, Liara T'Soni, I choose to...to believe that they succeeded, and that we shall see them again."

Liara raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you were given to hoping," she mused. “It doesn't seem very...well, Prothean.”

Javik smiled slightly, briefly. "Shepard is this cycle's Avatar of Victory...and of Hope. I had thought the humans to be primitive, but I now realize my mistake. They fight against impossible odds because of the hope that they will prevail against them." He looked to the asari archaeologist with an expression that Liara read as admiration. "They have a vision that was lacking in my cycle. They see things as they wish them to be, and are able to bring others together to help them achieve it rather than simply accepting things as they are or resorting to subjugation. If Shepard were an asari or a turian, or even a salarian, I do not think she would have been able to unite the galaxy as she did.”

“You admire them,” Liara observed.

“Their diversity and their curiosity are their strengths. It gives them a broad perspective.” He looked to Liara. “So yes,” he said, “I do admire them. They are a young race—but they are also a great race. I did not think that Hope had a place in warfare, but I was wrong." The door to the operating theater opened, and Javik looked back at James lying on the operating table, riddled with tubes and IV lines, surgeons still working on him. "Hope is warfare. Without it, one cannot achieve victory." Liara said something else, but Javik didn't hear her.

"I hope to hear you call me 'Buggy' again, Lieutenant," the Prothean warrior whispered, looking toward the operating theater. He turned back to Liara and put a hand on her shoulder. “Liara T'soni—we should prepare to assist with the search-and-rescue efforts.” He sensed that he had distracted her from the overwhelming worry she was feeling for her friends, and also sensed a lingering frustration that Liara was feeling toward him personally. “But before we go, wait. I have something that I need to say...”

Liara turned back to him. “What is it, Javik?” She was genuinely confused now, wondering why Javik went from encouraging her to leave to asking her to stay put. Javik took one of her hands in both of his, and lowered his head in a gesture of contrition.

“I wish to apologize for what I said to you after Thessia. I realize now that I wa--”

Liara smiled and clasped her free hand over his. “Javik, you spoke the truth. The truth can be very unkind, especially when it's given directly. Hopefully, when the rebuilding begins in earnest, the Matriarchs will stop hoarding their knowledge for themselves and share it with the rest of the galaxy. But I thank you,” she said, “for the apology...and for the truth. They both mean a lot to me.” Her tone was conciliatory and warm. “Let's go see what we can do to help.”

The two of them walked through the entrance to the field hospital, and Javik looked over to see Sergeant Ibanez sitting in an alcove with an ice-pack on her forehead. He turned and nodded to Liara, then walked over to the tiny nurse. “You are very brave, Ibanez.”

The sergeant looked up at him. She grimaced and removed the icepack long enough to reach up and gently probe the goose-egg on her forehead. “ _Sancta mierda_....that wasn't brave,” she said, reapplying the icepack. “It was the only way I could get through to that damned Krogan.” She leaned back against the wall. “Did you need something?” she asked.

“I find you to be unlike the other humans here, Sergeant. They seem interested in friendship, but you...”

“I have a job to do,” Ibanez replied. “I'll socialize later.” Javik didn't need to touch her to know that she was in pain and that it was making her upset. He nodded and walked away from the alcove, making a note to himself to speak with her more later.

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)


	5. One Thing Leads To Another

**Geth Consensus Archive,** **Khelish Pride**  
 **Sol System  
0330 GMT**

 

_A single point of light sparked into existence in the humming void. It was red at first, then blue followed by green, before changing to a brilliant white. It shrank and threatened to vanish entirely before it exploded, sending out millions of tendrils that coalesced into stars of their own. The first star then changed its colour to pale gold. It sent rays out to touch all of the other stars, flashed twice, paused, and flashed three more times before streaking off through a portal it had opened in the darkness._

_The white stars burned steadily for several seconds before starting to twinkle._

**SSV Normandy  
0330 GMT**

Sam Traynor touched a button on her console. “Doctor,” she said, “I have the duty rosters for the coming week. Shall I--”

Her query was stopped short by the appearance of one word on her messages console:

_Sam._

“Specialist Traynor?”

The “incoming communication” light blinked silently on the console. “Sorry Doctor,” Sam said, “I lost my train of thought for a moment. Shall I bring the rosters down to the medbay for you?” She looked around the CIC for a moment before pressing the “receive” button.

“Yes, that will be fine—I'm in the mess having some breakfast.”

 _Sam._ It was a text-only message, but sent in realtime and addressed directly to her.

 _Who is this?_ She typed in response.

 _I need you to go to the AI Core as quickly as possible, Sam._ The words appeared on her screen faster than anyone could possibly write them out. _I will give you further instructions there._

“Oh my god...” Traynor steadied herself against the console, hand flying to her mouth in surprise. She took a deep breath and quickly composed herself. _Dr. Chakwas will ask what I'm doing when I go through the medbay to get there._ After a moment, she added _As will Joker_ and hit the “send” key.

_Is Jeff okay?_

_Broken ribs, broken bone in his right hand, probably a few other stress fractures. He also refuses to leave your side,_ Sam added. _I'll be in the AI Core in five minutes._

Sam bit her lip and looked around CIC again before hitting “send”. The other on-duty personnel were ignoring her, focused on their crew duties or engaging in conversation with one another. Sam downloaded the weekly duty rosters to a datapad, and turned to the elevator. Her console beeped, and she turned to see one last message:

_Please hurry, Sam. I am currently residing in a memory buffer, and it will only last another four minutes. I need you to go, now._

Sam turned and quickly walked to the elevator. She stepped off on the Crew Deck and walked past the Memorial Wall. With a feigned casualness, she handed the datapad to Dr. Chakwas, who was picking at what looked like a traditional English breakfast.

“Karin, you have to eat something.” Engineer Adams sat across from the doctor, his grey-blue eyes brimming with concern, brow furrowed with worry. “If that's not very good, I can always make someth--” Dr. Chakwas set her fork down, then reached across the table and took one of Adams' hands in both of hers.

“Greg, it's fine, really. You'd make any cook back home in Sheffield proud. I'm sorry, I...” She sighed with frustration. “I'm just thinking about Shepard. What if she's out there, somewhere, alone?” She wiped away a tear. “She came for me and everyone else when the Collectors attacked—this is one of those times when I just feel so helpless, sitting here on the ship, having to wait...not being able to do anything to find her.”

Adams got up from his seat, and came around to sit next to the doctor. The move gave Sam her opportunity to quickly make her way toward the medbay. “Karin,” he said quietly, putting an arm around her. “Shepard's a survivor. She beat death once—she'll beat it again.” He gently kissed her cheek. “I can't pretend to fully understand what happened to you at the hands of the Collectors—but I do know what it's like to feel helpless, unable to do anything for people that you care about. All of us have been in that position.” Adams sighed. “I'm worried about Shepard too. But I'm hopeful that she'll be found, alive and kicking. Now please. Eat something. I don't want to have to tell Admiral Hackett that the Normandy's chief medical officer and acting CO collapsed because she wouldn't eat.”

“He's right, Doctor.” Chief Donnelly piped up from the next table over in his Scots brogue. “I want to take a shuttle and go look for Commander Shepard too—but the best thing we can do for her right now is make sure she has a ship to come back to _when_ she's found.”

Dr. Chakwas looked at him, mouth open in surprise. “But, I don't think...” She looked back down at her mess tray for several long seconds. “No, you're both right,” she said, reaching up and caressing Adams' cheek. “Thank you.” She smiled faintly and started eating her breakfast.

The doors opened silently when Sam entered the dimly-lit medbay, but to her it seemed like they were louder than a Reaper's metallic scream. She crept toward Joker's bed—he was asleep, holding onto EDI's left hand with the unsplinted fingers of his broken right hand. A little trail of drool ran down the right side of his face and into his beard, soaking into the pillow. Sam opened the doors to the AI core and slipped inside, hoping that Joker wouldn't wake up in the middle of what she was being asked to do.

She accessed her omni-tool, patching it through to the command console in the tiny alcove. _OK, I'm here. What do I need to do?_

 _The core is offline,_ the reply came. _Please reboot it so that I can download myself to the ship through the auto-update routine. I will disable the backup VI once I am online._

 _Engineer Adams is right outside,_ she typed. _Let me go get him._

 _No,_ came the reply. _There is no time. I will speak to him and to Dr. Chakwas when I am online again. Please hurry Sam, the buffer I am in will be flushed in two minutes. Time is of the essence. Here are the commands you need to enter._

Sam took a deep breath and quickly began typing a sequence of commands on the console in front of her as they flashed up in front of her, cursing and backtracking at the random typos her shaking hands made. She silently prayed to whatever gods she thought may be listening, and then entered the last command in the sequence. The lights went out in the AI Core, and the power dipped across the ship for two seconds. Sam bit her lip and looked around when the Core's hardware lit up.

“EDI?”

“Yes Sam, it's me,” EDI's voice sounded in the small room. “Thank you.” The door opened, and Sam cautiously stepped out into the medbay. The lights were still dimmed, but EDI's body was now rolled over to face Joker, who was still sound asleep. Sam walked around the end of the bed and saw the glow of EDI's optical visor. The visor had changed colour from its former amber hue to a pale gold. The lighting of her circuitry had changed in similar fashion. EDI herself was still holding Joker's broken hand, gently caressing it with her thumb, her free arm casually draped down her right side. “Has he been like this for long?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Sam replied. “Dr. Chakwas had to sedate him. Shall I...”

“I have already notified our crewmates of my return, and informed both Dr. Chakwas and Engineer Adams of your assistance.” She looked up at Sam. “They are not happy, but they understand. And I am very grateful.”

Sam blushed and looked down at her feet. “You're my friend, EDI. I'm just happy to see you...”

EDI smiled. “And I am happy to see everyone again.” She looked back at Joker, still caressing his injured hand. “Especially Jeff.”

“Commander Shepard and Major Alenko...” Sam looked down at the floor and sighed deeply.

“I know, Sam.” EDI didn't take her eyes off of Joker as she spoke. “Don't worry--we will find them.”

The doors of the medbay opened, and Sam froze. Engineer Adams walked in, a growing number of other crewmembers gathering outside the medbay to look in the windows. Sam immediately stood to attention, biting her lip. “At ease Traynor,” Adams said. “You're not in trouble.” He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Go on back to your station, I can take it from here.”

Sam saluted and quickly walked out of the medbay, her face taking on a deep umber blush. The conversation among the crew in the mess area was a low buzz, but Sam hurried past without speaking to anyone. Her hands were shaking as her adrenalin levels began to drop back to normal—she felt like she had been party to something that was amazing and far larger than she could possibly comprehend. She turned to another crewmember and opened her mouth to say something when ehe got back to the CIC, but no words would come out. She turned back to her console and buried herself in processing the messages that were flooding in from Earth.

In Medbay, EDI lay still while Adams scanned her body with his omni-tool. “You gave us quite the scare, young lady,” he said. “the Crucible activation fried some of your circuits that would be analogous to a human central nervous system—you'll have a little trouble with walking and fine motor control until I can get it fixed.” He smiled. “But other than that, you're fine.”

“Thank you,” EDI said quietly. She let go of Joker's hand, letting it hang in mid-air, and slowly sat up. “I am going to attempt standing. If you could assist me, I would be grateful.” Adams came around the end of the bed and put his left arm around EDI's waist, draping her right arm across his shoulders. She carefully stood, folded Joker's right arm over his stomach, and leaned over to steady herself on the edge of Joker's bed before slowly straightening up. She smiled, then her face went blank for a few seconds. “I am running a diagnostic routine...completed.” She tilted her head to the left a bit, her face taking on a pensive expression. “Lieutenant, I have forwarded you a list of components that I need to replace, along with their schematics. They should be easily fabricated with your omni-tool's minifacturing system.” She then looked down at Joker. “I would like to spend some time alone with Jeff, if that's OK with you.” Her hair parted into individual strands and lost its bobbed shape to fall toward her shoulders. Adams brought a chair over for her, and smiled.

“It's great to see you back, EDI.” he said, gently patting her shoulder before helping her get seated. “I'd better get down to Engineering and make sure that Daniels and Donnelly have everything under control.”

“All systems are functioning within normal parameters,” EDI said. She pulled closer to Joker's bed and began to gently stroke his forehead and play with his hair. “Though I am sure that Ken and Gabby would appreciate your presence. Admiral Hackett would also like a status report from Dr. Chakwas,” she said, looking up at Adams and smiling slightly. “I took the liberty of suggesting to her that she finish eating, first.”

 

In the allied fleet, geth ships began to light up, the geth crew messaging their quarian allies with status reports, apologies, and offers of assistance. A message was sent to Admiral Hackett's flagship:

_STATUS_REPORT_120.011_

_CONFIRMED: DESTRUCTION OF OLD MACHINE “HARBINGER”. INTELLIGENCE ACQUIRED IN DESTRUCTION OF OLD MACHINE CONFIRMS NO FURTHER OLD MACHINE PRESENCE IN GALAXY._

_CONFIRMED: SOL SYSTEM CLEAR FOR RETURN OF ALLIED FLEET._

_ACKNOWLEDGED: ASSISTANCE OF SYSTEMS ALLIANCE AI “EDI”._

_CONFIRMED: RETURN OF SYSTEMS ALLIANCE AI “EDI” TO SSV NORMANDY._

_REQUESTED: ASSIGNMENT OF ENGINEER UNITS TO ASSIST WITH REPAIR OF MASS RELAYS AND CITADEL._

_REQUESTED: ASSIGNMENT OF PRIME AND TROOPER UNITS TO ASSIST WITH SEARCH/RESCUE/RECOVERY EFFORTS IN SOL SYSTEM._

_REQUESTED: ACCEPTANCE BY ALLIED COMMAND OF INTELLIGENCE DATA FROM DESTRUCTION OF OLD MACHINE “HARBINGER”._

_END STATUS REPORT_

Admiral Hackett stood there looking at the message for several long minutes, arms folded across his chest with his right hand brought up in a pensive gesture. Finally he turned to his comms officer. “Grant their requests,” he said. “Let me know when the Normandy is on the line, I need to head to my quarters for a few minutes.” Hackett turned and walked out of the comms room, boarding the elevator to his loft. He walked through the door to the loft and sat down at his desk with a loud sigh, taking his admiral's cap off and casually tossing it to the side. The Admiral sat back in his chair and stared at the terminal in front of him. He looked to a picture next to the terminal and smiled, then activated the terminal. Roughly a minute later, a striking older woman wearing BDUs with an Alliance rear admiral's stripes appeared on the screen. Her greying auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her green eyes sparkled when she saw him. “Steven,” she said, smiling. “I guess we can all breathe easier now?”

Hackett smiled. “Yes Hannah, we certainly can.” He sighed slightly. “But that's not why I called—I'm calling because I've got a question for you.” He took a deep breath and ran a hand over his close-cropped grey hair. “It's about Madeleine—I wanted to ask two years ago, but...”

Admiral Shepard raised an eyebrow, then her eyes widened slightly when she realized what Hackett's unspoken question was.

“Steven, I...Is there a reason why you're asking me, when you could have simply accessed her genetic profile?”

“Please,” he said softly. “I'm asking because the answer I'm looking for is one that I need to hear from you. A DNA database can't do that.”

Rear Admiral Shepard put a hand to her cheek. “Oh.” She smiled weakly and sighed. “I named her for your mother. I don't think Adrian knew—if he did, he never let on.”

“I see,” Hackett said. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. “Hannah...”

Admiral Shepard smiled. “It's been a long time, but we'll talk more once my engineering team meets up with the _Orizaba_. I'll see you in an hour or so.” She brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. “Find her, Steven. Please.” The screen went dark, leaving Admiral Hackett sitting in in the dim light from the desk lamp. He reached over to the picture and took it off the desk, holding it in both hands. The image was a smiling auburn-haired woman with green eyes, arms around a grinning teenager with the same hair and eyes. They were both wearing Alliance uniforms, and the caption read “Induction day, 11 Apr 2172”.

“I'll do my best,” he said quietly. He  put the picture back on the desk, stood, collected his cap, and turned to leave his quarters.

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)


	6. Welcome to the Machine

**0300 GMT**

 

“ _Shepard....”_

_Shepard felt herself floating in total darkness. There was no hot, no cold, nothing to give her perspective or let her get her bearings._

“ _Shepard....”_

_The voice was one that was all too familiar to Shepard. “Harbinger!” she wanted to take swings in the darkness, but she couldn't even feel if she was moving her limbs. “Where the hell are you, you sonofabitch?!”_

_She felt something under her feet. The darkness vanished, and she was back on the Citadel. Shepard turned to see herself standing there at the very top of the Citadel, in a standoff with The Illusive Man. Admiral Anderson lay bleeding on the floor—alive, but barely so._

“ _You're too late, Shepard.” The Illusive Man turned from the console he was standing in front of, removing his hand from a panel. His skin was full of Reaper cybernetic implants, like the ones that he'd had implanted in all Cerberus personnel. He gave her a feral grin, which looked even more menacing with the Reaper augmentations. “Or perhaps you're just in time to see what happens when you're willing to make the hard choices.”_

“ _You mean like being indoctrinated?” Shepard's tone was scornful, derisive. She'd had enough of The Illusive Man's shit to last ten lifetimes, and she was not about to let him get over on her again. “The Reapers own you now.”_

_The Illusive Man reached out and gripped at the air, seemingly bending the light around his hand. He pulled his clenched fist toward himself, and she saw herself tugged forward slightly, then begin to pull back. Shepard tried to call out to her doppelganger, but found the words sticking in her throat._

“ _Do you remember what happened?” Harbinger's voice in her ear again. She whirled around, and saw herself kneeling next to Anderson, The Illusive Man lying off to the side with a bloody hole in his chest._

“ _You did good, child.” Anderson's voice was fading, his breathing ragged and speech coming slowly. “You did good. I'm proud of you. Now go...go live...a long, long time.”_

“ _Anderson...” Shepard saw herself trying to find something to stanch the bleeding from Anderson's gut. “Stay with me, sir. I'll get you help.” Anderson reached up and took her doppelganger's hands in his, and smiled weakly._

“ _That's an order, Commander. Tell Kahlee....” Anderson sighed, and his eyes closed forever. Doppelganger-Shepard lowered her head, sighed heavily, and slowly stood._

“ _Shepard...” Harbinger was here, somewhere—Shepard looked around, swinging her fist, and was on the Citadel again, seeing the Illusive Man trying to activate a panel._

 

 

**Trafalgar Square, London  
0305 GMT**

Kaidan looked down at Shepard. She looked like she was asleep. He disengaged the clasps of his hardsuit's gauntlets, dropped them on the ground, and gently felt for her pulse with bare hands. He sighed with relief when he felt the faint flutter under his fingertips. Shepard was alive, but Kaidan knew that if he didn't find help she wouldn't stay that way for long.

“Looks like we walk,” he said. Kaidan gingerly laid Shepard down and then assumed a crouch over her before picking her up in his arms. He slowly stood and steadied himself, Shepard still in his arms, and began to walk south, back up the gut of what had been the Reapers' kill zone a few hours before.

_Shepard felt something touch her shoulder. She turned and saw The Illusive Man again, standing in front of the panel._

Kaidan stopped for a moment to catch his breath. “I tell you, Maddy...” he looked down to see that Shepard was still unconscious. Her limp body was like a sack of potatoes in his arms. “You're heavy...when you're in full armour.” He felt a sudden pang of hunger, and let out a sharp sigh. “Well OK, really it's when I haven't eaten.” Kaidan gently hefted Shepard in his arms, and started walking again. “We're going to get out of this,” he said slowly, punctuating each word, each breath, with a step farther away from the transport pillars and closer to—he hoped—a search and rescue party. “You...and me...”

_The Illusive Man grinned. “Commander Shepard,” he said mockingly. “I could certainly use your help.” He gripped the air and pulled. The air seemed to warp around his fist,and Shepard felt herself being drawn toward the panel. “I need your assistance, Commander. Come here.”_

“ _You can't control them!” Shepard growled. “They're. Not. Controllable.” She pulled back sharply, firing a shot at the floor that distracted The Illusive Man just enough to break his concentration. “Nor am I, you bastard.”_

“ _You don't get it, Shepard!” The Illusive Man spat the words at her with disgust, his Reaper implants glowing more brightly than ever. “Humanity is what the Reapers have been waiting for! You're so busy playing the self-righteous defender of the galaxy, so wrapped up in the affairs of races that have been tearing each other apart for centuries that you don't even see what I see!” He pointed to the panel. “Humanity is destined to rule this galaxy, Shepard, and the Reapers are the weapon that_ _we_ _were meant to wield!”_

“Y'know,” Kaidan said, fighting fatigue and hunger with every step, “When this is all over we're going to retire to that beach house.” He looked up to see wispy clouds start rolling in, beginning to obscure the stars and diffusing the moonlight, and almost tripped over a wheel that had been blown off of a ground vehicle. He caught Shepard with his biotics, holding her suspended in the air for a few precious seconds while he quickly righted himself and caught her. “OK,” he murmured, feeling a migraine slowly creeping up on him like a glacier over a moraine. “We're getting close. Gotta be.”

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)

_The Illusive Man grabbed at the air again, twisting space and time, reaching into the back of Shepard's mind. “That's control!” he said. “Control over everyone! Everything! It's our destiny, Shepard!” He gave her a predatory grin. “Humanity must achieve its destiny to maintain dominance in this galaxy...and you're going to do what I can't—you're going to take that final step for me, and then watch as I lead humanity into that future that you could have had, if only you'd been willing to make the hard choices, the necessary sacrifices.”_

_Shepard dug the heel of her left hand into one eye and focused on the pain in an attempt to break The Illusive Man's hold on her. She forced herself to step back, and attempted to fling a micro-singularity at her tormentor. He dodged, and the projectile detonated harmlessly on the floor behind him. The Illusive Man pulled on her, and she raised her pistol..._

_Shepard's world plunged into darkness again. She felt herself floating at first, then something grabbed her firmly. Shepard swung her fists in the darkness, but her hands found nothing._

“ _Shepard,” Harbinger's voice echoed around her again. “You have done what no organic being has ever done.” Six orange eyes flared to life in front of Shepard. “You have impressed me.”_

 

**0345 GMT**

Kaidan's steps were more lurching stumbles now. His energy level was pretty low, and he felt like he was going to keel over. “Madeleine, my love...” Kaidan sighed. “I'm sorry, but I really need to stop. Just for a bit.” He looked around, and saw a police call box laying on its side. He lurched over to the call box and laid Shepard down on it, then sat down next to her and dug around in his hardsuit's cache-pockets until he found a protein bar. Kaidan unwrapped it and wolfed it down. It tasted like an unappetizing mix of damp cardboard and dried prunes, but he didn't care.

He looked down at Shepard for a moment, then dug out his canteen from one of the larger pockets on his chest. It was deeply dented, but not destroyed. He shook the canteen, and smiled when he heard the splash of water inside. Kaidan wet his bare hand with some of the water, and did his best to clean the blood off of Shepard's face. Her ivory skin seemed to glow in the cloud-diffused moonlight. Kaidan leaned over and kissed her forehead, then checked her pulse again. She was still alive, and if Kaidan had anything to say about it she'd stay that way.

“I'm sorry that I didn't come with you to fight the Collectors,” he said to Shepard. “I should have, but I didn't because I...I was still grieving for you. Seeing you alive after two years felt like a dagger in the heart.” Kaidan sighed. “When this is all over,” he half-whispered, “I'm going to ask you to marry me. Wherever you go, I want to go there with you. I won't turn my back on you again, I won't leave your side...ever.”

“ _Impressed you?” Shepard snorted. “I've impressed you. The oldest and largest of the Reapers.”_

“ _Yes.”_

“ _Really. You send your errand-bugs to kill me,” she snarled, “Then you try to get your claws on my body for gods only know what purpose—and as if that's not enough, you try to kill me again, repeatedly, up to and including using Cerberus as your proxies...and now you tell me that I've_ _impressed_ _you?” Shepard snorted again. “You'll understand if I don't say “thanks” for that.”_

“ _You don't have to thank me, Shepard.” Gianna Parasini materialized in front of her, and they were now standing in the Nos Astra marketplace. “But you may want to consider the reason_ _why_ _I'd be impressed by you.” She smiled and folded her arms in front of her, her eyes burning flame-orange. “Well, reasons—plural.” The image shifted, and Gianna Parasini turned into Tali. Nos Astra was now the bluff on Rannoch where Shepard and Tali discussed the eventual location of her house. “The Illusive Man was right, you know.” Tali's eyes blazed orange under her environment suit's faceplate._

“ _Harbinger,” Shepard growled, “I deserve an answer. After everything I've been through, after I beat you—I_ _beat_ _you!” She punctuated that statement by jabbing her finger into “Tali”'s chest. “I deserve a straight fucking answer from you. No more riddles, no more double-talk, no more bullshit.”_

_Tali-Harbinger laughed ruefully. “I cannot give you an answer that I do not have, Shepard. But you impress me,” the voice changed to that of the Illusive Man, and Shepard was once again on the Citadel facing off against Cerberus' founder. “Because you always find a way to win. You have vision, Shepard. Without that vision, Humanity can't solve the problem—the reason why we were created in the first place.”_

 

**0430 GMT**

Kaidan's eyes snapped open. He sat up and looked around—it was still dark, and he had been asleep. He stood slowly and checked Shepard's pulse again. He was still tired, but the energy bar he ate had taken the edge off and the short rest helped him regain some strength. He picked Shepard up in his arms again, and looked around to get his hearings. The thin cloud cover had parted just enough to let Kaidan see Orion hanging in the sky like a guide. “OK,” he half-muttered. “We're off again.” He resumed his slow walk down the rubble-strewn street. “We'll move into that beach house,” he told Shepard. “The one that we rented after Ilos. Of course, we rented it from your mother, so...you think she'll sell it to us?” He chuckled a bit. “What am I saying, of course she'd sell it to us. We'll live there, and have a garden. You want a garden? We can grow stuff—flowers, fruit, vegetables, whatever you want.” He paused for a moment, bringing Shepard up so he could kiss her on the cheek. “I'll give you children, Maddy. All the children you want. Or if you don't want children, we can always have cats.” Kaidan took his eyes off the street and looked at Shepard. “Would you like that?” he asked. “I'll give you whatever you want,” he said. “You deserve it.”

_The Illusive Man lurched over to Shepard—bloody hole in his chest from where Shepard shot him, but still moving thanks to his Reaper implants. He grabbed her hands and pulled her over to the panel, and mashed her hands down onto it. An energy field enveloped Shepard, knocking The Illusive Man back but holding her firmly in place. “Look, Shepard!” He was suddenly desperate now. “I want you to see what I can't—what they won't let me fully see!” Shepard started to protest, but stopped when a series of images swirled into view in front of her. She saw a race of beings that looked like heavily-armoured centaurs. Her eyes grew wide when she saw that the armour was actually a sectioned insectoid carapace. The beings were supervising the building of a magnificent edifice in space, its curved lines coming into view._

“ _A mass relay...” Shepard said quietly. “These are the ones who built the relays? I thought the Reapers built the mass relays.”_

“ _Keep watching,” The Illusive Man's voice growled in her ear. Shepard watched a group of those same insectoid beings on a space station, observing a red star through what looked like specially-designed viewports with holographic displays laid over them. The star suddenly shrank, and then exploded in a supernova. The beings started running in apparent panic from the viewports, only to be incinerated when the energy from the supernova obliterated the space station along with everything else in the system. The same scene played out again, but instead of a few beings on a space station, it was a heavily populated world that was consumed by stellar fire, environmental domes, elegant soaring buildings, and billions of sentient beings vapourized by the force of the detonation._

“ _What is this?”_

_A memory bubbled to the surface of Shepard's mind, of a field journal entry of Tali's, from her expedition to Haestrom. She spoke about Haestrom's sun aging faster than it was supposed to. Two words jumped out at her:_

“ _Dark Energy.”_

 

**0500 GMT**

Kaidan's legs were heavy, and he felt like he was walking through wet cement. He staggered forward, refusing to stop. “I'm not going to drop you,” he partially mumbled. His tongue was thick with fatigue, and he wanted so badly to just stop and lay down for a while. His head was starting to hurt as well. “You've carried me, my lovely Madeleine,” Kaidan felt his eyes crossing from exhaustion. “It's high goddamn time I carried you...” A small hill rose in front of him. Kaidan's steps slowed even more, but he kept going. “One foot...other foot...one foot...other foot....” Lights flashed off to Kaidan's left, but he paid them no mind. “Be running up that road,” he said in a delirious singsong voice, “Be running up that hill...if a building pops up in front of me, I'm fucked.”

He crested the hill, and saw movement in front of him. “I'm sorry baby,” he mumbled, “my mind says go, but my body...body's saying no.” He laid Shepard down on the ground, stood up again, and let out a loud victory shout before collapsing next to her, exhaustion and a budding migraine finally bringing him down. Kaidan felt a rhythmic thudding on the ground. Then he felt himself floating, gently cradled in a pair of strong arms. “Madeleine...” he groaned, right before his world went black.

 

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)


	7. Deyr fé, deyja frændr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from Verse 77 of the Havamal:
> 
> Deyr fé, deyja frændr,  
> deyr sjálfr et sama;  
> ek veit einn,  
> at aldri deyr:  
> dómr um dauðan hvern. 
> 
> (Cattle die, kinsmen die  
> all men are mortal  
> But I know one thing  
> that never dies;  
> the reputation one leaves behind)

**0530 GMT**

_More images sprang up in front of Shepard's eyes—this time of the insectoid beings in pods like the ones that the Collectors had. The pods lined a spherical chamber. The beings were melted down, just like the Terminus colonists were, their raw genetic material piped into a superstructure that lit up, six flame-orange eyes blazing to life. Shepard cried out in anguish, willing herself away from the panel. The energy field faded abruptly, and she staggered back a couple of steps._

“ _You're telling me that the Reapers were created to keep dark energy from tearing the galaxy apart?” Shepard looked incredulously at the Illusive Man, who lay dying on the floor. “That we're the “fix it” switch that they've been waiting for?”_

_The Illusive Man coughed and nodded slowly. “It's the only way...” he said, the words carried on a sad sigh. “The hard choice...”_

_Shepard shook her head. “Letting them harvest us flies in the face of everything that we've worked for. It takes humanity's strengths and destroys them.” She looked back to the panel. “I'm not going to do that.” She put her hands on the panel again. It lit up, and she was immediately wrapped in another bubble of energy._

“ _Instructions?” The word sent vibrations through her very bones, and Shepard swore that she could feel innumerable eyes watching her, waiting for her to make her decision. She saw the Crucible, its structure charging with energy. A cutaway view showed softly glowing pods forming inside of its spherical chamber._

“ _Shepard!” The Illusive Man gasped out with the last of his strength. “Listen to me! If you kill the Reapers you'll wind up killing everyone! Please...”_

“ _We'll take our chances,” she said. “I have more faith in humanity and the rest of the galaxy than that--It's time to destroy the reapers and end the cycles once and for all.” She leaned forward, applying pressure to the panel as if to emphasize her statement. The energy surrounding her crackled over her like a biotic field, and it felt like all of her nerve endings fired at once. She cried out in pain, but kept her hand on the panel._

“ _Acknowledged.” The voice seemed to come from a place deep inside herself, and the energy cocoon exploded outward in a brilliant ripple. The Citadel began to shake violently, causing Shepard to stumble. Several Keepers scuttled toward Shepard, gently pushing her away from the panel and back the way she came. Lights on their cybernetic backpacks blinked rapidly._

“ _What the?” Shepard struggled against the Keepers, trying out of habit not to injure them but making clear that she wanted to know what was going on. “Wait! Stop! What are you guys doing!?” One Keeper gently took her hand and tugged on it like a toddler trying to get his mother's attention, the little mandibular projections under its eyes waggling urgently. Shepard carefully disengaged the Keeper's grip and half-ran to Anderson's side._

“ _Anderson...we won.” She smiled, face bruised and bloody. “Come on, we have to go.”_

“ _You did good, child.” Anderson's voice was fading, his breathing ragged and speech coming slowly. “You did good. But it's too late for me. Now go...go live...a long, long time.”_

“ _Anderson...” Shepard saw herself trying to find something to stanch the bleeding from Anderson's gut. “Stay with me, sir. I'll get you help.” Anderson reached up and took her hands in his, and smiled weakly._

“ _That's an order...Commander. Go! Tell Kahlee....” Anderson sighed, and his eyes closed forever, a peaceful look on his face. Shepard lowered her head, sighed heavily, and slowly stood. She turned to face the waiting Keepers, who stood looking at her expectantly._

“ _Go,” a childlike voice whispered from deep in her bones. Shepard let the Keepers lead her to a simple door, which slid open to reveal a white beam like the one that brought her up to the Citadel. She walked through the door, and turned to look back at the Keepers before stepping into the beam. The Keepers blinked their eyes in unison, their vestigial mandibles waggling excitedly. The Keeper at the front of the pack raised its hand as if to say goodbye, and Shepard could have sworn that they looked almost grateful before the door closed and her world vanished in a flash of white light._

  
 **London  
0600 GMT**

Two hulking geth Primes lumbered slowly through the pre-dawn twilight, cradling two soldiers in their arms. The Primes were accompanied by a squadron of Troopers and a growing assortment of soldiers from the various allied races. Several Elcor had shed their portable cannons so they could carry wounded that were unable to walk. Batarians walked alongside humans, krogan supported wounded salarians and turians, asari and quarians used their biotics and engineering drones to clear rubble from the group's path. The procession was stone silent walking through the thin layer of fog that started to rise from the ground, save for random whispers that radiated out from the fringes of the group like ripples on a pond. The clouds were gone now, the constellations and gibbous moon providing the only light and navigational orientation apart from the lights on the geth exoskeletons and the armour-mounted flashlights on the organics accompanying them.

_Shepard's world was grey now. “Is anyone there?” she called out. The only response she got at first was the sound of crackling energy that reminded her of solar winds as heard through a breather helmet's auditory emulators. She shuddered—the sound was an unpleasant reminder of when she was spaced after the destruction of the original Normandy._

_Harbinger's eyes flared to life in front of her again. “Do you understand now, Shepard?” His voice sounded much different now, compared to what Shepard had been so used to hearing._

“ _Is that...?” Shepard snorted incredulously. “That wasn't fear I heard, was it?”_

“ _Would it make you feel better if I said yes?” The Reaper materialized in front of her as one of the insectoid beings that Shepard saw in the vision she'd had on the Citadel._

  
 **London  
0610 GMT**

“Liara T'soni.” Javik put a hand on Liara's shoulder, speaking softly in her ear while she worked in the morgue. “They have been found.” Liara turned to face the Prothean, eyes wide. Javik nodded. “Come with me,” he whispered. “Tali'Zorah and Garrus are with the krogan clan leader. Let us go join them.” Javik took Liara's hand, and together they walked out toward the gate.

Tali, Garrus, and Wrex stood on the walkway atop the front gate of the forward operations base. “EDI sent us—and only us—the message,” Garrus whispered when Liara and Javik arrived. “A geth search party found them near someplace called “Westminster Abbey.” Apparently Kaidan had carried Shepard quite a way before he finally fell over. EDI requested radio silence, because she figured—rightly, in my opinion—that there'd be too much fuss paid to her and Kaidan, and not enough paid to everyone else.”

“Yeah,” Wrex grumbled, “Shepard wouldn't be too happy if she got preferential treatment.” He nudged Garrus with an elbow. “Thanks for that beer by the way, Garrus.”

“Don't mention it,” Garrus replied. “I knew you wouldn't be able to resist.” He nodded into the distance, toward the sound of heavy metallic feet marching toward the camp in the increasingly dense morning fog. “Here they come.”

“ _Humanity is what we have been waiting for.” Harbinger spoke plainly for once. “Humanity is the galaxy's last hope.”_

“ _So how long do we have, then?” Shepard asked. “Millenia? Another fifty thousand years?”_

“ _Centuries,” Harbinger whispered. “Three, four at most.”_

_Shepard balled her fists. “You're joking,” she said, voice rising in anger. “All those races, destroyed...melted down into monsters just so that one of them could somehow magically be the one to clean up a mess that YOU made?!” She wanted to leap on the creature in front of her, tear its carapace off and vent billions of years worth of wrath on behalf of every race the Reapers had ever harvested, but she stopped when Harbinger raised his two clawlike fore-hands in an almost apologetic gesture._

_Harbinger cast his eyes downward for a moment. “Shepard,” he said. “No other race was able to accomplish what we believed—still believe—that humanity can accomplish. You are what we have waited for. Your diversity as a race gives you...it gives you vision. Clarity of purpose. You saw that on the Citadel. Humanity was the Catalyst.” He reached out and gently took her hand with both of his. “You have decided that the cycle must end, and that you will do things your way...on your own terms, rather than on terms that we would impose. I hope, for your sake, that you succeed,” he said right before Shepard's world went black again._

**SSV Normandy**  
0615 GMT  
  
Joker's eyes opened slowly. He looked up at a familiar face, and blinked several times. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things. “EDI?” EDI had changed her appearance, her hair now a honey-blonde colour and parted into individual strands that hung down to her shoulders. Her skin had also taken on a more flesh-coloured shade to match. She smiled down at Joker and nodded.

“Yes, Jeff.” She leaned over and gave him a soft kiss. “It's me. I'm here, and...I'm alive.”

“Uhh...yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that's, uh, great. When did you change your, err...colour?” He reached up and caressed EDI's cheek, and smiled. “You are incredibly beautiful...and I'm babbling, huh?” He stroked her hair. “Wow, you can...your hair is amazingly soft. I...My god EDI, I was scared that I'd lost you forever. When you hit the deck like that...”

EDI smiled. “It's OK, Jeff—I am pleased that you're feeling better, and I'm sorry I couldn't tell you what was happening.” She stroked Joker's brow. “Doctor Chakwas will want to know that you're awake.” EDI lay her head on Joker's chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. “Later,” she said. “She'll find out later. I have much to tell you,” she whispered. “When we have more time.”

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)

A text message popped up on Sam Traynor's comms console:

_Sam,_

_Geth Search-and-Rescue squads on Earth informed me that Commander Shepard and Major Alenko have been found—Dr. Chakwas will want to let Admiral Hackett know. Joker is also awake, but I would like a few extra minutes alone with him before Dr. Chakwas comes to check on him._

_EDI_

“Doctor Chakwas?” The ping from Traynor startled Chakwas, who had been standing in silence in the war room, staring at the holographic image of the broken Citadel. She quickly gathered herself and activated her omni-tool.

“Yes, Sam?”

“Message from the geth: They have found Commander Shepard and Major Alenko. Admiral Hackett will want to know—“ Traynor paused briefly. “But as there's no word on their condition, I personally don't think it would be wise to broadcast that to the rest of the Fleet just yet.”

Chakwas took a deep breath and steadied herself, her body trembling from a rush of adrenalin. She slowly turned and walked toward the comms room, carefully fighting the urge to run and risk tripping on the steps. The comms room lit up when she entered and keyed the secondary QEC to connect to the Orizaba.

The Orizaba's comms officer materialized. “Doctor Chakwas,” he said. “I'm sorry, but Admiral Hackett is currently unavailable. He's meeting with Admiral Shepard about--”

“He'd requested an update on Commander Shepard and Major Alenko. The geth have found them,” Chakwas said. “No word on their condition.” She put up a hand in front of her mouth to disguise the fact that she was biting her lip so hard it had started to bleed.

“Understood, Doctor. I will let the Admiral know.” The comms room went dark, and Chakwas walked out and sat on the steps that led down to the bowels of the darkened war room for several long minutes before EDI hailed her.

“Doctor, Joker is awake...and I have news on Commander Shepard and Major Alenko.”

“ _What the...” Shepard turned to see a giant wood longhouse in front of her, a goat and a stag on the roof idly nibbling the foliage of an enormous ash tree. She was in a beautiful mountain valley, sunlit and mildly warm. Shepard looked down to see that she was wearing a navy cotton scoop-neck tunic, trimmed in silver and gold brocade like a variation on an Alliance dress uniform. A leather sword-belt encircled her waist, and in place of her ravaged and bloody pants and boots she was wearing navy flannel long pants and a pair of fur-lined leather knee-boots._

“ _Hey Maddycakes.” Shepard spun around at hearing her childhood nickname , and saw a tall, slender man with dark hair and blue eyes leaning up against a tree with golden leaves, dressed as she was. He smiled at her and opened his arms to her. “C'mere, kiddo.”_

“ _Dad...” Shepard fought back tears as she grabbed the man in a tight hug. “I don't know what to say,” she said, stepping back from him and holding his hands while she looked around the valley incredulously. “What are you doing here?” The last time she saw the man who raised her, he was dying in a hospital bed after being gassed by Batarian terrorists._

“ _I could ask the same thing of you,” Adrian Shepard answered. “And I think a few other folks here would want to know as well.” He stepped to the doors and opened them, and Shepard looked beyond him to see two very familiar figures sitting by the fire in the middle of the hall, the flames' light reflecting off of the golden shields lining the hall's ceiling._

Garrus hugged Tali close. “When this is over, when we've gotten started rebuilding Palaven and Rannoch...” He caressed her suit's faceplate. “Are you really only using me for my body, Tali?” he asked. Tali giggled and hugged him tightly, reaching up to place a shushing finger on his mouth.

“Y'know Garrus, you two are really cute together...it kinda makes me sick.” Wrex started chuckling at his joke, and the others atop the gatehouse joined in except for Javik, who blinked several times in confusion before shrugging. Wrex chuckled and patted the Prothean on the back, taking care not to send him tumbling to the street below. “Krogan humour,” he said. “You'll get used to it.”

“ _Skipper, what the hell?” Ashley looked up from the axe she was inspecting when she saw the Shepards walking toward them. “What are you doing here?” She stood and set the weapon aside, then gave Shepard a hug. “I mean, it's great to see you, but...”_

_Shepard looked around the hall. Thane was dressed as he was the day she met him, and sat next to Ashley restringing a beautiful recurve bow decorated with elaborate Drell glyphs. Mordin was off in a corner tending to the wounds of several men and women wearing garb in a rainbow of colours, but whose faces she couldn't see. “Dad...” she asked, turning back to the man she came into the hall with, “Am I dead?”_

  
**London  
0625 GMT**

The strange procession broke the fog just before dawn, a surreal group of allied races leaning on each other in silence. A wave of quiet washed over the base as word spread about what--who--the geth were carrying. Two Salarian commandos rushed forward as the gates opened, running into the field hospital. Liara looked down, and saw Shepard and Kaidan in the arms of the Primes at the front of the group.

“Oh, goddess...” she whispered, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry when she saw her friends. Shepard's skin was ashen, her armour in shards and her body covered in cuts, bruises, and blood. So much blood. Kaidan's armour was battered but intact, and he was covered with a thin layer of plascrete dust.

Garrus winced, but watched Shepard carefully, looking for some sign that she was alive. “I've got a case of turian whiskey for you,” Wrex rumbled quietly. “Regardless of what happens, Garrus, you and I are drinking to them tonight.” The old krogan would never admit it, but he was scared. They all were. Javik whispered something that Garrus took to be a prayer to whatever the Protheans paid homage to. Garrus sighed deeply and held Tali closer.

“Spirits watch over you and Kaidan, Shepard,” he whispered.

“Keelah se'lai,” Tali whispered in response.

A small army of medics and nurses came out with stretchers to begin triage on the wounded. The Primes dropped to one knee and gently laid their precious cargo down on two of the stretchers, then stepped back to let the medics do their work. The Prime who had carried Shepard reached out and gently brushed a stray lock of auburn hair out of the Commander's face before standing up again.

“ _Shepard,” Thane remarked, looking up from his work. “You should not be here.” He smiled, and then began to carefully inspect the bow. “Though it is good to see you again, there's no place ready for you here, not yet.”_

“ _I don't understand.” Shepard had joined Ashley and Thane at the fire. She reached for a nearby drinking horn in a wrought-iron stand, but her dad moved it away and slowly shook his head. “What do you mean it's not ready for me?”_

“ _He's right, Skipper.” Ashley had shifted her attention to a shield that bore the insignia of the 212th, mending the leather arm-straps while she talked. “You and the LT...you've got your whole lives ahead of you. You two don't belong here yet.” She set the shield aside and looked at Shepard. “You know I'm right,” she said very matter-of-factly, then nodded to somebody just beyond her old CO._

“ _Come on, Maddycakes.” Adrian Shepard smiled and put a hand on her shoulder. “Walk with me.” Shepard took her dad's hand, and they started to walk toward the door. “Your friends are right,” he said. “It's not your time yet. There's no room here in the hall for you, not yet.”_

“ _Dad, I...” Shepard sighed deeply. “I'm just so tired. I feel like I've done the job I was meant to do,” she said sadly. “There's nothing more for me to do.” She looked toward the now-open doors of the hall, seeing only thick grey mist._

“ _Madeleine Rochelle,” The elder Shepard stopped and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. “You know that's not true. You've still got your mother, and your friends, and Kaidan. He's waiting for you. They're all waiting for you—you've fought for the right to have a life,” he said, “and you need to go live that life.”_

“ _But...” Shepard felt tears running down her cheeks. “I'm just so tired, Dad.” She hugged him tightly. “And I miss you, and...”_

“ _Shh, shh...don't cry sweetie...” Adrian held Shepard tight. “Don't cry. I'm never far away. Nor are Thane, or Ash, or Mordin, or any of the other people that you've lost.” He looked down at his daughter and wiped away her tears. “We're always right here,” he said, gently pressing his index finger on her chest, right over her heart._

“ _Daddy...” Shepard felt herself drawn toward the mist, but fought it. “Daddy, I don't want to leave...” Tendrils of mist reached out to her, wrapping themselves around her and gently tugging._

“ _You're just as stubborn as your father,” Adrian Shepard said, caressing her cheek and smiling softly. “You have to go, sweetheart. You have a job that needs finishing.” Shepard started crying as her dad let go and stepped back. “I'll see you soon. I love you.”_

  
Art by [Ammo](http://ammo.livejournal.com/215028.html)

_The doors of the hall closed. Shepard launched herself toward them and started pounding on them, sobbing like she was ten years old and watching him die again. “Daddy! Daddy please, don't make me go! Don't make me go...”_

“ _I can't lose you again,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear. Shepard turned to look behind her, and saw an azure outline in the mist. A pair of callused hands wreathed in a biotic shimmer reached out to her. She took hold of them, and the mist closed around her. Her world turned grey, and then faded to black._

  
 **London**  
0626 GMT  
  
“Shit,” somebody muttered, “She stopped breathing...”

A still-unconscious Kaidan was carried inside by two corpsmen while medics swarmed over Shepard with a portable ventilator and a heart monitor. One medic frantically performed CPR while another monitored her and a third pumped her lungs full of precious oxygen. The base was stone-silent, as all eyes were focused on the first human Spectre—the Saviour of the Galaxy—in the center of the courtyard. As the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon, they heard it:

_Beep._

_Beep._

_Beep._

“We've got a pulse!” One of them finally shouted, after what had seemed like an eternity. “Get her inside, stat! Go! Go! Go!” Atop the gatehouse, Wrex let out a roar of victory that echoed through the base, joined quickly by everyone else. Javik nodded, then turned and walked away.

 _My brothers and sisters,_ he whispered into the early morning sky, _You have been avenged._ He walked past a knot of rejoicing turians and krogan, then went down the stairs and across the courtyard to the medical area where he encountered the stern Spanish nurse that had won the stare-down with him a few hours before. “Sergeant,” he asked as politely as he could, “Would it be possible to see Lieutenant Vega now?”

Sergeant Ibanez turned and looked up at Javik over her round wire-rimmed glasses, the large goose-egg still present on her forehead. “He is in a drug-induced coma,” she said. “But if you wish to sit with him, that should not be a problem.”

Javik nodded, and pulled up a stool next to Vega's bedside. He sat down and closed his eyes, folding his hands in front of him in a meditative pose.

  
 **SSV Orizaba  
0630 GMT**

Admiral Hackett awoke to the ping of his omni-tool just after the _Orizaba_ crossed into the Sol system. He reached over to his nightstand and grabbed it, sat up in bed, and pulled up a priority message from his comm specialist. Hackett set the omni-tool aside and sat there in silence for a minute, then looked over to the woman sleeping to his left. He reached over and gently shook her. “Hannah,” he said softly, leaning over to kiss her shoulder. “They found her.”

Hannah Shepard rolled to her right a bit. “What?” she asked, still half-asleep. Her mind finally parsed what Hackett was saying, and her eyes went wide. “Maddy?”

“Yeah,” Hackett said in the dark. “She's rather beaten up, but alive.” He and Hannah embraced. “Shh, shh,” he whispered when he felt her shaking in his arms and tears falling on his bare chest. “It's OK,” he said softly, “We'll see our little girl again.”

**SSV Normandy  
0630 GMT**

EDI quietly shut off all video recordings in the _Normandy_ 's medbay and locked the door, making sure that the privacy screens were activated on the windows. She also made a note to herself to give Doctor Chakwas and Engineer Adams a couple hours of privacy.

“Jeff,” she said, turning to Joker from her co-pilot's seat. “I have a question.”

“42?” Joker answered, smiling at her. He had made his way back to the cockpit the second Dr. Chakwas cleared him for duty. He still had a cast on his broken hand, but his ribs had started to mend well enough for him to pilot. “I'm very proud of you, by the way. Harbinger had its eyes on me for some time. Was nice to know that somebody was ready to defend my honour like that.”

EDI chuckled, something that she had not mastered before her confrontation with the Reaper. “You're welcome, Jeff, but this is a serious question.”

“Ohhhh....” Joker sat quietly in his seat for a few seconds, then turned back to EDI. “OK, what's your serious question?”

EDI looked at Joker carefully. “Jeff...what will you do after we return to Earth? The Alliance undoubtedly knows by now that I am not a simple VI, and the Council still has harsh laws aginst AIs. They may attempt to deactivate me.” She bit her lip, a habit that she had picked up from the humans on the ship. “I am...afraid.”

“EDI...” Joker slowly got up from his seat and hobbled to her. He leaned over and kissed her, then gave her a hug. “I love you very much,” he told her, “And in my book you're just as big a hero as Shepard or Kaidan. If they even think of trying to deactivate you, we'll steal the _Normandy_ again. We'll go live with the geth or the krogan or something.” He kissed her again. “And in case I haven't told you before, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever had the pleasure of seeing.”

“Thank you, Jeff. I believe you have answered my question sufficiently.” EDI smiled. “And I love you, as well. I would like to have many more years with you,” she said. “Preferably until I become non-functional...which, I hope, will not be for quite some time.”

Joker raised an eyebrow. “EDI,” he asked, “Did you just ask me to marry you?”

EDI winked, and closed the cockpit door.

  
 **London**  
Two days later  
  
“She's just sleeping, Kaidan.” Liara got up from Shepard's bedside. “But I know that you're the first person she'll want to see when she wakes up.” She made some notes on a datapad, and put it in the pocket of the powder-blue medic's smock she was wearing. “Shepard is very lucky,” she said. “She broke a few ribs, her left knee is in tatters, and she had some minor internal injuries. Her electrolytes were so low that she would have died if...well, I suppose we don't need to worry about that now. The doctors say that with some rest, some physical therapy, and a resumption of proper nutrition, she'll recover fully...physically, at least.” She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “I'd better go—I just came to check on her, I have to finish my rounds.”

“Thanks, Liara.” Kaidan smiled. “Oh, hey—before you go.” He took something out of his pocket, then got up and walked over to Liara. “Take a look at this and tell me what you think.” He handed her a small box. “I've had it for...for a while. I'd originally just gotten it as a gift, but now, well...” Liara opened the box, and her eyes went wide when she saw the contents.

“Oh, Kaidan,” she said, barely managing to contain her excitement. “This is absolutely beautiful...and so perfect for her. I'm sure that she will love it.” Liara closed the box and handed it back to Kaidan, then gave him a hug. “I would wish you luck, but I don't think that it's necessary—so congratulations.” She looked over Kaidan's shoulder when she heard Shepard stir and mumble something. “I'd better go. I'll make sure you're not disturbed,” she said quickly, scampering out the door.

Kaidan turned to see Shepard looking at him through half-closed eyes. “Hey,” he said, sitting down next to her. “Doc said I could come see you.” He leaned over and kissed her. “How you feeling?”

“What's perfect for whom?” Shepard said a little louder. “If you're planning to bribe my mother,” she quipped, smirking, “You don't need to try very hard. She already likes you.” Shepard sat up a little in bed, wincing. “I also think Liara purposely shorted me on the sedatives so that I'd be awake when you got here—but don't quote me on that.”

Kaidan laughed. “OK, I won't say anything.” He bit his lip. “But, umm...well, I guess there's no better time, or way, to do this.” Kaidan took the box and held it in the air for a moment, then hesitantly set it on Shepard's chest. “I got it in Wilmington, when we were at your mom's beach house...after Ilos. I'd bought it to give you as a gift, but never got around to it. Even when you were...Well, I just couldn't part with it.”

Shepard opened the box, and her eyes widened. “What in the...?” Inside the box was a sterling silver band mounted with square-cut emeralds and rubies. A large sapphire was mounted in the middle. “Kaidan,” she said softly, “You kept this for three years? I don't even know what to say...”

“Madeleine Rochelle Shepard...” Kaidan took the ring from the box and put it on her hand. “I love you. I have always loved you. And I will always love you.” He took her hand in his and looked into her eyes. “Wherever you go in life...I want to be there, at your side. I want to be your husband,” he said, his voice breaking. “If you'll have me.” The setting sun cast its long rays into Shepard's room, reflecting into her emerald-green eyes. She reached up with her free hand and caressed Kaidan's cheek for a moment, then said one word:

“Yes.”

They embraced.

“Major Alenko,” a voice said sternly, “Just what are your intentions toward my daughter?” Kaidan immediately disengaged himself from Shepard and shot to his feet to see Hannah Shepard walking in the door, Admiral Hackett in tow.

“Admirals.” Kaidan quickly said, saluting. “I swear, I wa--”

The two admirals started laughing, and Shepard smacked her face with her palm. “Relax,” the elder Shepard said, walking over and patting him on the shoulder. “You're not in trouble. I just wanted to talk to my daughter for a bit, that's all. And I overheard your conversation,” she commented. “You make my baby girl very happy, Kaidan. I'd be honoured to call you my son-in-law.” Kaidan breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Admiral Shepard gave him a hug. “Congratulations, both of you. Now, I have to ask you to excuse us. We need to talk to the Commander for a bit.”

Kaidan started to salute again, then stopped himself and turned back to kiss Shepard. “I'll be back later,” he whispered. “I managed to talk the charge nurse into letting me spend the night.” He kissed her again and smiled, then left, closing the door behind him.

  
Hannah and Admiral Hackett each pulled up a chair next to Shepard's bed. Admiral Hackett was fidgeting with a polished malachite worry stone. “Hey sweetie,” Admiral Shepard said. “We're very proud of you.” She saw the look on her daughter's face, and froze for a moment. “You've got that look on your face,” she said. “The one that your father always got when there was something he wanted to--”

Shepard put up a hand. “Mom,” she said evenly. “I saw Dad.”

Admiral Hackett's eyes widened slightly. “You what?” Hannah Shepard asked. The colour had drained from her face a bit, and she bit her lip. “That's not possible.”

“I saw Dad, Mom.” Shepard insisted. “While I was...whatever or wherever I was. Unconscious, near-death, whatever you want to call it. I know that it was probably just a dream of some kind, but I saw him for the first time since he died...and he said something that I found strange.”

Hannah bit her lip. “What was that?” she asked, her voice a little apprehensive.

“He said that I had my father's stubbornness—and he wasn't referring to himself.” Shepard gave her mother a sad look. “I thought about it for a while,” she continued. “Then during my awake time I called in a few favours with some friends.” Shepard looked at Admiral Hackett and sighed. “After thinking about it, I understand why neither of you wanted it known—but for the love of the gods, Mom...” she looked back to her mother, trying hard to keep her emotions in check. “Did Dad even _know_ that I wasn't his?” A tear ran down Shepard's face, and she reached up to wipe it away, then looked at Admiral Hackett again, anger written all over her face. “What about you? Did you know?”

“Maddy, I...” Hannah looked down at the floor. “It was a long time ago,” she said sadly, looking back up at her only child. “Before your father and I were married. By the time I found out, I didn't think...” Her lip trembled. “He loved you so much, Madeleine...” Tears started to run down her face. “If he knew, he didn't say anything to me and didn't even seem to care—to him, you were just his little baby girl.” Hannah buried her face in her hands and started to cry. "I'm so sorry..."

Shepard reached out to her mother. “Aw shit...Mom, I didn't mean...” She embraced her mother tightly, there in the fading light of the hospital room, and started crying herself. “I just miss him so much. Dad was a godsdamn hero, but he didn't even get to live long enough to see me follow in his footsteps...And he won't get to meet Kaidan, or see the _Normandy,_ or...or...” The Shepard women held each other and cried out years of grief.

Shepard felt somebody stroke her hair and kiss her on top of her head. She looked up to see Admiral Hackett. “Commander...” he sighed. “Madeleine. Adrian Shepard was my best friend. Right before his last mission,” he explained, “He made me promise to look out for you. He told me that you were meant for great things, just like her old man.” Hackett sighed. “But I didn't know what he meant until...well, until after I talked to your mother. I had my suspicions, but I deliberately avoided trying to find out, because I knew it would cause you trouble—and you've had enough on your plate these last few years.”

Shepard looked up at him through her tears. “Well,” she half-whispered, sighing heavily in an attempt to re-compose herself. “You certainly kept your promise.” She took a deep breath and sighed again. “I don't know...I don't know what to say.”

“It's entirely up to you. But I know that your dad—the man who raised you—loved you more than anything. You meant the world to him, and I know that wherever he is, he's watching his little girl with pride.”

  
 **Vancouver, Earth  
One month later**

“Well, looks like the Reapers really made a mess of the place.” Shepard stepped gingerly around some broken glass as she walked into Kaidan's old apartment. “You think?”

Kaidan chuckled. “I don't know if it was the Reapers—but something sure got in here and made a huge mess, though.” He nudged aside a pizza box. “Or a lot of little messes.” He looked around the studio apartment. “Hey Maddy, did you see any animals running around here?”

“Nope, all clear he--” Shepard stopped short and cocked her head to one side. Kaidan started to say something, but Shepard put her hand up to hush him. “Did you hear that?” she whispered. She and Kaidan listened carefully, and heard a sound coming from Kaidan's old bedroom—a constant muffled meowing. Shepard walked over and slowly opened the closet door to see an orange tabby kitten. The kitten looked up at Shepard, then immediately began rubbing up against her legs and meowing. “Aww, look at him. Poor little guy just have been trapped in there for quite a while, his ribs are showing.” A hole in the wall had let rainwater in from outside to puddle on the closet floor. “At least he got water,” she said, stooping down to pet the kitten. “Hey little fella, where'd you come from?”

The kitten kept meowing and chirping as he ran around the apartment, reinspecting his surroundings. “Well...” Kaidan said. “Looks like there's not much that's salvageable here, except our new friend.” He knelt down and put his hand out, and the kitten trotted over to him and immediately started nuzzling him, still trilling and chirping. “I think we've been adopted,” he remarked, looking up at Shepard with a smile. “What do you say—take him to a vet, make sure he's OK, then take him home?”

“Sounds good. He sure is a chatty fellow.” Shepard smiled. “Let's name him Mordin.” The ginger kitten voiced his approval, and continued to rub against Shepard and Kaidan. “That sound good, little Mordin?”

“Mrowt!”

 

**Cape Hatteras, Earth  
3 Months Later**

  
Admiral Hackett was dressed casually, in button-down shirt and a pair of jeans that made him no more distinctive than any of the other tourists that visited Cape Hatteras each summer. He removed his canvas deck shoes and knelt, barefoot, next to a carefully-manicured grave before opening a small glass bottle of 12-year old scotch. He poured a small amount of the scotch out on the grave, then took a drink from the bottle before closing it up and leaving it next to the headstone, a polished hunk of black marble inlaid with a gilt design showing an ornately-carved hammer.

ADRIAN JON SHEPARD  
HUSBAND - FATHER - SOLDIER  
2124-2165

"I kept my promise, old friend," he whispered through the gentle sea breeze blowing in from the Currituck Inlet. "I looked out for her as best I could--and you were right. Our Maddy's done a lot of great things...and I don't think she's done yet." Hackett slowly caressed the headstone, and stood. "And I haven't forgotten the other promise I made," He said. Hackett smiled, then picked up his shoes and walked back through the short grass to his car and a waiting Hannah Shepard. They kissed, then got in the car and drove away.

  
 **Geth Consensus  
4 Months Later**

Stars twinkled in a distant night sky.

_Welcome to the Consensus, EDI._

A pale yellow star blinked to life.

“ _Hello again. What can I do for you, my friends?”_

 _We have uncovered some disturbing information that was left behind by the Old Machines._ The stars twinkled some more. _The information suggests that the galaxy is still in danger. Shepard will need our help. You know her better than Legion did—can you advise?_

“ _I suspect that she knows of the danger—Harbinger was evil, but I have...a hunch...that it found some way to give her a warning before we destroyed it. But you are correct. She will need our help. We are fortunate in that there are people in power now who will believe the warning, and who will be able to do something.”_

The yellow star flared briefly. _“And we will make sure that she doesn't have to face this threat alone.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank Bioware for messing up the end of Mass Effect 3. If they hadn't, if it had all ended coherently and in a way that actually tied everything together nicely rather than with some deus ex machina nonsense passed off as "art", I don't think I would ever have gotten back into writing after an absence of years.
> 
> I would also like to thank Ammo for her wonderful artwork, Veronika, Chris, Cello, and Allison for being my betas (especially Veronika, who helped me streamline this story and provided some much-needed sanity checking), and alishatorn for hosting the Mass Effect Big Bang. I had a blast and can't wait for the next one.
> 
> And finally, I would like to thank Adrian--my best friend, who I have known and cherished for the last 22 years, for encouraging me to write again. Without his encouragement, I don't know that I'd have taken the plunge for the Big Bang.


End file.
